When I was 12, I climbed Ragged Edges, a 190-foot 5.8 in Willow Springs Canyon, at Red Rock, Nevada. I didn’t know how to climb very well then — my brothers and I used borrowed equipment and a “creative” belay solution — but the late Randall Grandstaff saw our blundering and taught us how to climb correctly. Hence, I would live to be old. Now, at 37, I resent Grandstaff’s altruism. I suffer from depression.
I fight it — I have for years and I will for years to come. I hope someday to find happiness, to write a book about how I became “cured.” Yet for now, I cannot see writing that book. I wake up with a crushing weight on my chest and a cruel fog painting the world black, turning it distant and muted. I lie down at night, fearing I won’t awake.
The Black Dog first came when I was 21. I had a college scholarship in Utah and found myself happy, getting good grades and climbing. Then, out of nowhere, came a feeling of darkness — of anxiety, uncertainty, and self-doubt so strong I knew I’d never be the same. I ran to a hospital, thinking that I was dying. The doctors could not help. I ran away — I ended all relationships and dropped out of school, riding my bicycle from Provo to Las Vegas, where I hoped old friends and familiar rock would ease my pain. I lost my scholarship and my fiancée. Eventually, I returned to school, disappearing to the rocks when the darkness came.
In February 2007, after I lost my job as a prosecutor, the Black Dog returned. This time, he stayed. Last March, I couldn’t get out of bed; I couldn’t breathe. I could barely move for the pain. I decided to make it end at Red Rock, where I’d climbed all my life. A “climbing accident” would be easier on my mother, wife, and daughters than a suicide.
On March 17, 2007, I drove west into the canyons. I parked my car in Willow Springs and shoed up. Ten feet up Ragged Edges, I paused at the imaginary line where a boulderer would stop, the crux still 60 feet above. Would I have the courage to let go? I wondered. I kept climbing, my forearms burning and the desert floor growing distant. Then, suddenly, 60 feet up, I felt something I’d not felt in months: elation. I breathed deeply, soaking in the beauty of the canyon, the exhilaration of climbing. And I started to think of ways to retreat. Perhaps I could downclimb or traverse way left. Or I could, as planned, just release the rock.
Yet I didn’t. I clung tightly to Ragged Edges’ buckets, and then breezed through the wide-fists crux. Fifteen minutes after starting up, I scrambled to the top and lay down, the ice-laden sandstone sucking away what body heat remained. Twenty-five years ago, I’d lain near this exact spot, so full of life.
I have survived cancer, high-altitude cerebral edema, decompression sickness, the deaths of my grandparents, father, and 19 friends and relatives —\and depression is still worse. Never did I imagine this terrible reality. When I had cancer, no one said, “Snap out of it, stupid ass — cancer is a choice!” Yet the few people in whom I’ve confided about my depression seem to think that “toughening up” is the answer. If only it were so easy.
Atop Ragged Edges, I turned to the right, walked off, and then swapped out my Ninjas for tennis shoes. Back home, I told my wife I’d been hiking. She served me cold fajitas on a paper plate; she knew I’d lied, but neither of us had much to say about it.
As night fell, I retreated to bed. I found two Xanax tablets amidst my cluttered bathroom and dissolved them under my tongue. The tranquilizer numbed my brain, and I drifted into sleep. Some minutes later, I started out of bed to the sound of a barking dog. There in the driveway stood a black Boxer, baying toward my upstairs window. I looked at the dog — I looked at it squarely — but it didn’t avert its gaze. Soon it turned and disappeared into the night.
Kenneth Long is a criminal appellate attorney in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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