Base Camp

The first time I arrived at Plaza de Mulas, the base camp for the Ruta Normal on Aconcagua, it took me by surprise. There was so much to see and do. Even though I had taken the better part of 3 days to walk the 26 miles, I was still suffering from the 14,000 feet elevation. My sore throat wouldn’t go away, I had little appetite for food as I was acclimating poorly. In spite of those ailments, the place was a wonderland. Never before had I been in such a setting, surrounded by climbers from all over the world. It was my home for more than a week before I felt well enough to move higher, and with so much time on my hands, I roamed – no farther afield than to fetch water from the toe of the nearby glacier, but mainly within the confines of the camp. Everyone was friendly and helpful – they’d share any information with you if you asked. One day I conducted a census, wandering from tent to tent, and realized that there were fully 300 climbers there from across the globe.

Although we were in Argentina, there were hardly any Argentines in the camp. Oh sure, a few – there was a Red Cross post manned by helpful Argentines, but precious few others. Arrieros, those who led mules to the camp with climbers’ gear, came and went, but weren’t much of a presence. We were a horde of strangers from other countries, for the time being resident in a foreign country, there to try to climb a mountain that wasn’t ours. Thinking back on it, we were there by permission of the good people of Argentina. A bunch of fat cats with the money to fly there from far away, with our fancy gear, clothing and food. Many on the mountain had paid additional thousands to some company to take them by the hand and conduct them to the summit, all of this going on in a quiet corner of some very high mountains. Thinking back on it all now, it was a privilege to be there.

Kangaroo Island

In 1992, during my first visit to Australia, I spent a month driving around the country in a rented car. I covered a lot of ground, spending 6 days on Kangaroo Island in the process. In case you haven’t been there, the island is close to Adelaide. One morning, I was at the petrol station in the village of Penneshaw, where I met Tom and Judy Lashmar. On the spot, they invited me to their home for lunch, so I followed them for 22 KM out along the Willoughby Road. Tom was a 5th-generation K Islander, and he raised sheep. They fed me a wonderful lunch of pumpkin soup, spinach quiche, salad and good South Australian wine during 3 lovely hours spent at their beautiful home. They insisted I come for a longer visit before I left the island.

Three days later, I was back at their end of the island and gave them a ring. “By all means, come on over right away.” That I did, and enjoyed a fine supper with them. As we whiled away the evening hours, I learned an interesting detail about them. Over 20 years earlier, they had worked for a spell on a ranch in a different part of the country. A young girl and her mother were also there, recently-arrived from England. The girl turned out to be none other than Greta Scacchi, who went on to become a well-known Hollywood actress.

They had a little guest house where they put me up for the night. The next morning, I went out early to do some birding, where I saw several peafowl – they had been living wild on the island for many years. After breakfast, I offered to give a ride to Kim (their son’s girlfriend who was staying with them), a ride into town where she worked all day as a nanny. The hospitality of the Lashmars was typical of what I encountered in my travels around the country, and it certainly left me with a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Judy and Tom Lashmar, with Kim.

My First Record

In the spring of 1963, I bought my first record. It was an LP of the record “Crying” by Roy Orbison. Okay, there’s nothing unusual in that, right? Except ……. I didn’t own a record player. So why would I do such a thing? Well, my best friend, who lived a few blocks away, he had one. It was just one of those old portable record players, common enough. I didn’t own one because we were too poor, my single mother trying to raise 4 kids on her own. As often as I could talk my way into Larry’s place, I’d bring my record with me and we’d play it. One day, his mother, who was 40-ish like my mother, popped her head into Larry’s room and said “You know, I think that’s a really nice record, I really like it.” I was shocked, as I didn’t think our mothers were supposed to like the same music as us, but I was really pleased to hear her say it. To this day, almost 60 years later, it’s still my favorite album, and I love listening to it on my computer.

Stevie Nicks

Okay, here’s one for you, but it’s pretty weird. In 1985, I was living in Phoenix, Arizona. To earn a living, I would buy houses, fix them up as needed, then re-sell them. It was a thing, even back then – in fact, over the years I did almost 200 of them. So anyway, here it was, 1985. I had this nice 2-storey modern home for sale with an ad in the paper. A guy responded and asked to see the place, so I met him there the next day. He loved it and, right on the spot, said he wanted to buy it. I had a contract with me, so we filled it out and I got his check for a thousand dollars as earnest money. He wanted to close in 30 days. So far, nothing out of the ordinary, right?

He told me he was a hairdresser and he worked at a high-powered salon in Scottsdale, boasting that one of his clients was the rock star Stevie Nicks. Every time she was in town (she may have had a home in the Phoenix area), she would come to the salon to have her hair done by him. As I listened to this guy talk, he actually seemed quite obsessed by her. Well, the days passed by, and as we approached our closing date, I phoned him at his home number. No matter how many times I tried, there was never any answer. When I finally tried to reach him at the salon, his co-workers said they hadn’t seen him in more than a week. They were worried, as that wasn’t like him to not show up for work, leaving his regular clients in the lurch. Our closing day came and went, with still no sign of this guy. He forfeited his thousand bucks, of course. I kept in touch with the salon to see, just for the hell of it, if he ever did show up. He never did, and months later nobody had seen hide nor hair of him. Weird, huh?

Lean-To

Here’s a tale of the first time I ever went camping. It was the summer of 1963, and our parish priest, a likeable fellow named Father Dickenson, chose me to be the kid from our parish who they’d send to summer camp. A whole bunch of us kids, along with several adults, boarded a boat in Vancouver and away we went, over the bounding main, to arrive at this camp on an island. It was a pretty nice place, actually, and I loved the 2 weeks I spent there. We lived in comfortable bunkhouses and had 3 nice meals a day, and they had no end of fun activities for us to while away the hours. Did I mention this was a camp run by the Catholic church? It was decided that the oldest group of boys, about 10 of us, would go camping with a young priest who would be in charge. The motorboat loaded us all up one day and took us over to the nearby mainland and dropped us off.

The weather was sunny that day as we started out on foot. I remember each of us had an old Trapper Nelson pack board, to which we lashed our sleeping bags and our share of group gear like food. We set out along an old overgrown logging road which was flat and easy going, and managed a few miles before the day grew late. This young priest must have figured that he had the experience to manage a camping trip with all these 15 and 16-year-old boys. With our hatchets, he had us chop down a few saplings and lash them together to create a framework, then cover it with evergreen boughs. It was pretty big, enough for all of us to lie down beneath it. I can’t remember what we ate for supper, but it couldn’t have been much. After a campfire and a few songs, we turned in.

Did I mention that this all took place on the British Columbia coast? Well, not long into the night, the weather changed – clouds rolled in, and it started to rain. Those boughs over our heads weren’t worth a bucket of warm spit, and before you knew it, boys were being woken up by water dripping on their faces. We crowded closer together to avoid the drips, but soon ran out of dry spaces, and before you knew it, we were like a bunch of drowned rats. Our sleeping bags were soon soaked, as were we, and what a miserable night we spent! Come daylight, our heavenly Father decided to call it quits. We packed up and retraced our steps back down to the shore, arriving mid-morning.

Now what? From the shore, we could easily see across the water back to our summer camp. I measured it on the map today and it was just under 2 miles as the crow flies. All we wanted was to get back to camp, but we had no boat (they weren’t scheduled to pick us up for 2 more days). We were surprised, though, when we realized that we could hear a variety of camp sounds from across the water. There was no wind, and the water was glassy-smooth. Then the priest came up with his only good idea of the trip. He said that, on cue, we would all shout as with one voice, in the hope that somebody at the camp would hear us. So we did – I can’t remember exactly what we shouted, but it may have been “hello”. We shouted it over and over, taking breaks once in a while. Some time later, we heard someone calling back to us. We kept up our plaintive cry, and, against all odds, the motorboat started up and came across the water to us. Saved!!! So ended my first camping trip. After such an experience, I’m surprised I ever tried it again.

Rambito

The year was 1990 and we were nearing Christmas. I was holed up in an Argentine ski lodge during their off-season, it being the Austral summer. The place was deserted, except for a caretaker and his assistant. Gratefully, I was allowed to crash in one of the bunkhouse buildings and use it as a base of operations, so to speak, as I spent a couple of weeks climbing there to get acclimated for bigger stuff to come. The caretaker of 4 years was Jorge, a fellow of native blood, the only true Indian I ever met in Argentina. They are far and few between, comprising less than 1% of the population, having been mostly extirpated by Europeans long ago. He was a kind and likeable fellow, but his assistant ……. well, that was another matter.

This guy was a short fellow, well below average height. It seems that in order to compensate, he put on a tough-guy act. When he first met you, he spoke in an aggressive manner, trying to intimidate you. His main claim to fame, however, was this huge hunting knife he always carried in a sheath on his hip. He spent a lot of time wielding it and sharpening it, making sure you knew darn well that he had it handy and ready for use. People who knew him called him Rambito, or “little Rambo”, after the character Sly Stallone played. Little, because of his short stature, and because of his Rambo-like knife. As the days passed, I got to know Rambito better and in the end, he was a pussycat.