Brett's carbon fiber ice hatchet rams into the clear frozen floods of the icefall.

Specks and shards of fragile blue ice tinkle against his captivated goggles and the frozen creeks of breath that coat his noteworthy facial hair. He kicks spiked crampon-shrouded boots into the lopsided ice, mooring him to the frozen cascade many feet over the valley floor.

In the spring, this cold precipice will be a stunning cascade. Yet, until further notice, the scene is quiet with the exception of Brett's worn-out breathing as he climbs.

Brett lifts his left foot and kicks it into the ice wall, pulling himself up a couple of inches, and his psyche unwinds into the consistent musicality of ice climbing...

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

Brett has mumbled this mantra to himself and rehashed its encouraging rhythm to him a greater number of times than he can count, on many cold pinnacles and tricky icefalls from Colorado to Kilimanjaro.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

He understands these words better compared to his own name. Since Brett Avenbruck was destined to vanquish mountains.

***

As far as he could recollect, Brett had wanted to climb. He actually recollects the manner in which his dad grinned proudly as he told and retold Brett how he would screech and cry at whatever point his mom attempted to remove him from his high seat.

Brett assembled his first shaky treehouse at seven years old utilizing wood scraps from behind his dad's shed and some old rope from the carport. He'd referred to it as "perch."

The late spring after his wrecked arm was mended, Brett enhanced his treehouse, moving it significantly higher into the enormous oak branches that concealed their rural patio. This time, he requested that his dad bring back some rope from the docks to assist with making the stepping stool.

His dad disheveled his hair and said he'd attempt.

In any case, climbing the always-moving icefalls and the most elevated cold tops on earth was nothing similar to his treehouse. Since it takes more than boldness and ability to wander into the meager air at the top of the world.

It takes penance.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

***

Brett actually recalls the day he let his dad know that he was passing on the clinical school to seek after an existence of climbing. He can in any case hear the falsehoods he'd been practicing on the commute home.

It's only for one semester. He wanted a chance to clear his head before his residency. He wouldn't miss excessively.

"This is ordinary, Father. Heaps of prescription understudies take a holiday. I'll be a specialist soon, very much like mother generally needed," Brett guaranteed him.

His dad gestured abruptly and rearranged into the kitchen. The two of them heard reality underneath the falsehoods.

Brett followed, marveling at how stooped his dad appeared. He looked so little in their old kitchen. Bowed and contorted like the maturing oak on the patio.

Brett got a brief look at the rope stepping stool actually hanging from his treehouse through the kitchen window.

It was pretty much as thick and solid as the day his dad had brought it home. Brett had advanced barely a year ago that his dad had paid $1 per foot for that length of rope — a fortune at that point.

Brett scoured at the pale spiked scar on his lower arm. He never figured out how to carve out the opportunity to return to prescription school.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

***

A solitary penetrating call above makes Brett stop his purposeful trip.

He pummels the hatchet into the ice to moor himself and admires seeing a bird of prey skimming in a sluggish oval over the ridgeline. The smoothed-out body and numerical flawlessness of the bird's outline cut through the fresh blue of the sky like a stone skimming across a still mountain lake.

Once more, the hawk calls, a staccato of cut cries that reverberation off the pale ice and dull stone of the rough wild. Brett's head goes to follow the hunter as its pinpoint wingtips and smooth tail contract into a speck in a progression of stretched twistings.

They're both chasing after something in this desolate scene.

Brett wipes his goggles clear with a gloved hand and admires seeing that he's just twelve feet from the lip of the icefall. His hands shiver inside his gloves. He's stopped for a really long time.

He swings the hatchet hard and strikes a bulbous edge of ice over his eye level. His goggles cloud with dampness, and his mantra starts again.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

***

Before long the fragile blue of the sky obscures with the edge of fluid profundities caught in the ice. Brett's hatchet is cutting away high up itself. He's almost at the top.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

Brett scales, past the commotion and the groups.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

He moves higher, each inch moving him farther away from the overdraft expenses and the squinting traffic signals.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

He's moving farther away from the bookkeepers, and the biggest shopping day of the year deals, farther from the supported up inexpensive food drive-through lines on Tuesday night when everybody is too worn out to even think about cooking...

Step, kick...

...farther away from the casual banter at his sister's housewarming party where he didn't know anybody yet her.

...pull, Hatchet!

Increasingly high he moves, past the unscripted television, and 24-hour news, past the strip shopping centers, all-you-can-eat buffets, and packed clinics.

Step, kick, pull, Hatchet! Step, kick, pull, Hatchet!

Brett's hatchet nibbles into the highest point of the pinnacle where the water straightens into a smooth pool before the wild tumble to the valley floor. He kicks higher and lifts himself up, zeroing in on the last complicated moves that let him swing his leg over and slide to the top.

"I made it," Brett murmurs as he lies on his back close to the edge.

The cold from the ice leaks past the covering of his waterproof coat and merino fleece base layers. It feels better — reviving, even. His worn-out breath from the last climb puffs in blasts like an old steam motor as he battles to pause and rest at this rise.

Brett actually grasps the shaped hold of the hatchet handle in a white-knuckled grasp on his chest. He knows that once he puts the hatchet down, the ascension will be finished. Also, he'll be one bit nearer to the world underneath.

His grasp fixes. He's not prepared to give up. He's not prepared to leave these levels. He's not geared up for everything except this belief, this outright opportunity...

***

The careful medical caretaker next to him makes a sound as if to speak. Brett shakes his head and peers down at the instrument in her grasp. "You requested the surgical tool, specialist?" she asks, and he gestures. She hands it to him and handles it first.

The heaviness of the sensitive well honed sharp edge shocks him.

He rubs his thumb across the slim round handle of the accuracy device, feeling the crosshatched scores in the metal grasp through his medical gloves.

It feels cold. Practically cold.

The blare of the heart screen drones a mantra he knows so well —

Signal ... signal ... signal ... signal ... signal ...

Brett breathes out behind his flimsy careful cover, a sluggish murmur of hot air, and makes the main cut.

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