Dr. Jedidiah's Diary: Episode #84: Joanne, the Life Savior in the Mountain

Dr. Jedidiah’s Diary

Dr. Jedidiah is a psychiatrist who loves traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures. As a single father who lost his wife to drug overdose 10 years ago, he has not been his old perky self for the last decade. During those hard years, he has met hundreds of, thousands of people from various walks of life around all over the world. Meeting new people and listening to their stories outside his office have given him different feelings from the ones through the formal encounter groups or being truly honest with himself. Here is Dr. Jedidiah’s monologue that has left him with some food for thoughts in life…. or a fodder to justify his own mistakes in the past.

Episode #84. Joanne, the Life Savior in the Mountain

 It had been quite a while since I last went out to hike. One of the biggest exhilarating pastime activities to take care of my mental fatigue in life was to climb rocky mountains: a perfect space where I was able to look deep inside of me and be honest with my most unbridled self. There was no need to look my best by wearing some harlequin hats or pants while I was willingly absorbed in propelling myself up in the challenging mountains. Joanne was always there each time I needed her in my journey to rough mountain tops. As an experienced rescue worker, she used to give me a complete sense of security and the critical mindset I’d need to be on the safe side while facing up to the mountains. She’d say “Dr. J, once you have all your gear checked, you should have your mind checked as well.” I didn’t know what she meant when I first heard that, but after several years of mountaineering, I came to realize what she wanted to say.

 

Joanna was not a talkative partner while taking a hike with me. However, her face was all smiles whenever I started to grumble about unagreeable weather, ascending each tricky course of mountains. Whenever I asked her how she still looked so calm and effortless in the midst of hitting the arduous terrain, she said “We’re not tackling or conquering this mountain. We are embraced by this mountain.” Her words were always beyond my understanding or somewhat abstract like a beautiful piece of poem echoing in the mountain range, but I knew Joanne was not trying to convince me about mountaineering with a smile like that. She had her own tears in the mountains, which was like a sad rendition going over and over again in the back of her mind. She lost two of her closest friends in Mount McKinley when she was at the highest point in her life as a mountain rescue team. In her face lined with deep wrinkles and sunken cheeks, I saw an unsung hero who spent all those years in combing the mountains searching for crying survivors. Joanne told me about the hopeless moment that she had to cut the rope on her friends who were frostbitten all over. The split second was chock full of countless thoughts about this or that, life or death, and good decision or remorse for life. She said watching her friends plunging into the fathomless crevasse like a lifeless rock shattered not only their lives but her own as well. 

It took a couple of years for Joanne to go back to mountains to save stranded people since she lost the friends so painfully in mount Denali. She’d tell me we should get ready for everything that mountains have to say. Sometimes they want us to feel welcomed and some other days, they are roaring and hollering at us. When I said I wanted to call her an altruistic savior in the mountains, she shook her head and said “No, I am just doing the ineluctable thing to breathe again in my life. Just to breathe again.” Her smile looked sad but showed no qualms about what I said. Yes, she looked fully ready to take whatever in store for her in the mountains.

 

Expressions

    1.  exhilarating: making one feel very happy, animated, or elated; thrilling

    2.  unbridled: uncontrolled/ unconstrained

    3.  harlequin: in varied colors

    4.  arduous: involving or requiring strenuous effort; difficult and tiring.

    5.  rendition: a performance or interpretation of a song

    6.  unsung hero: a person whose heroism or achievements are unacknowledged or little-known

    7.  ineluctable: unavoidable

    8.  qualm: an uneasy feeling of doubt, worry, or fear, especially about one's own conduct; a misgiving