No loafing

LITTLE ROCK — What to say about this day? A day of early spring, brisk and crisp, windy and sunny, only just removed from indifferent winter. It’s cold here still with a bite that snaps at exposed skin.

Above me an eagerly alive deep-blue-sky day waits to be used up; grudgingly it would fade into night. Right now the early day sunshine strobes westward into my eyes, flashing through a network of bare limbs.

I stand with my son on the dirt and gravel parking lot of Sugarloaf Mountain, a distinctive rocky lump plopped conspicuously onto river bottomland on the eastern edge of Heber Springs.

Sugarloaf rises only about 600 feet from its little plate of flatness, but standing alone makes its sandstone loft pronounced. There seems to be no consensus about what makes a mountain a mountain, so as Heber Springs’ best-known peak it will have to do.

My son’s first college year had been interrupted by his first spring break. It would have to do as a break, not a proper bacchanal. Short of invading the Florida panhandle, which was heavily defended by a hostile economy, sticking around the Natural State (or whatever it’s called these days) was an easy decision.

Getting outdoors had become a priority for me; days spent over a chilly computer had solidified into an icy malaise. It used to be called cabin fever, but “touchpad disorder” has a minty, wintry flavor.

A few days spent on the Buffalo River with his mother had hopefully primed my son for this short climb, a climb that lingered for me as a favorite childhood memory, distant but cozily familiar and all good fun.

And now it was time to go back up; not as a big adventure, but a return to a familiar place. And to drag my son with me.

He’s the strong, silent type, my son, a man of few words, the type of man in short supply these days. In other words you won’t find him standing in the middle of the street, jabbering on his phone. Or jabbering anywhere for that matter.

He replied to my text invitation in his typically monosyllabic voice, translated digitally as: SURE.

A few single syllable words later, we were on for the next day, departure time moved to an hour his teenage constitution could survive.

When our destination appeared in all its bag-of-sugar-shaped loafy goodness, nestled between the hills surrounding Heber Springs, a sense of relaxed expectation settled upon me. A glance at my son revealed not a whole lot, other than an especially calm expression that made me smile at my reflection in the mirror.

Then we stood in the parking lot and I silently vowed to avoid inundating my son with a litany of my Sugarloaf climbing experiences, a difficult thing given the crazy number of times I’d hoofed it up Sugarloaf as a kid.

I’d climbed with groups, with a tight circle of friends, alone, in light and darkness. Winter, summer, spring, but, best of all, while shrouded in fall’s mind-boggling colors.

There was a familiarity here that was hard to keep inside; I didn’t want to bore him, but I finally decided being myself was worth more than an uncomfortable but expectant silence.

I decided to give only him the really good stuff.

Other than annoying my son, what I feared most was a spectacular physical collapse halfway up. I imagined awakening on my back, panting like a lizard, foggily calculating how quickly a medevac helicopter could reach me.

In other words, initially I felt horribly out of shape, a feeling made more poignant by my memories of teenage sprints up this trail.

A bad sign: A third of the way up my loud gasping had begun to scare birds into flight. It seemed my fear had become grounded on the shoals of my flabby body.

But I kept going, trying to channel my sobbing pants into low whistles of exhalation that sounded less ominous. I hoped my son couldn’t hear; a futile hope, but one my dying brain cells could latch onto.

I kept my eyes down, only glancing up to find a landmark I might reach; a rock 20 feet away, a discarded beer can a few yards farther along, the fly-cloud circling a decaying jaybird just in front of me. My son skittered ahead like a spider, but stayed in sight.

Of course my silly fear of death soon evaporated; I found myself at the trail’s end, at the bottom of Sugarloaf’s rocky loaf. Past here there aren’t really trails, mostly rock steps and stony layers at the base of the loaf; getting to the top meant going vertically through creases in the rock.

I looked up and thanked the deep blue sky that my wind returned quickly; perhaps I wasn’t bumping up against my expiration date quite yet. My son was breathing normally, of course, looking around for a way up. Still a bit weak, I flung my flaccid arm toward the shelf that ran around the bottom of the top.

Up next was the second part of the climb, or more accurately, the monkey scramble.

There are vertical lines of cracks, splits and crevices in the imposing wall of rock that stood between us and the summit. Quite a few of them offer a dangerouslyserrated pathway to the summit, depending on your skill level.

I was looking for one accessible to a 10-year-old; the one directly in front of me, on the other hand, was perfect for that whacked-out guy who climbs skyscrapers. There are several other ways up, all of them tougher than the traditional, suitable for a 10-year-old, route. Because I’m a firm believer in tradition I steered my son toward that one.

Standing in front of what we always called “the way up” we came upon our first major obstacle: humans. Usually called “other people.”

As in, “We can climb up when these other people get the hell out of the way.”

The others, in this case, were a husband, wife and children. The wife was trying to keep the kids from hitting each other in the head with rocks, while the husband casually yelled down about how easy the climb was.

Easy for him, without two kids wrapped around his lower legs like fleshy leg warmers.

Clambering up Sugarloaf is a matter of coordinating feet and hands, best done without children attached. Hands seek handholds, feet probing for … footholds. Coordinate the two and up you go. Now that I think about it, much like climbing anything.

Pushing up the first rocky crevice, my hands scraped against cold stone edges and my throat was already raw from gulping cold, dry air.

Hurts or not, my son and I crab-walked up quickly. For me the way up was pretty well-known, even after all the years. My son, on the other hand, was relatively inexperienced. Luckily he was, in genetic-talk, “half hillbilly.” This DNA gift, much like a superpower, gave him the ability to climb expertly, like a spider monkey with a bachelor’s degree.

Up we went. Two-thirds of the way up was a natural resting area; this was also where most people decided to give up.

It was the last “safe” place before the summit.

And here sprawled a man, his black Metallica Tshirt sweat-soaked and limp, much like his winded body. An intense dislike of heights had done him in.

He speared me with a gaze both defeated and determined. The short but steep climb had finished him off and he was determined to go no farther.

I sneaked a look at my son. He looked slightly amused at the man’s frightened stubbornness.

The man’s companion, almost certainly his brother, was peering down at him, using an ancient motivational tool called ridicule. It wasn’t working.

The immobile man finally ended the discussion with bravado, with a piercing final-word phrase: “I ain’t going up there.”

My son and I passed both and hoisted ourselves onto the flat surface that is the top of Sugarloaf. Reaching the top wasn’t exactly anticlimactic, but climbing instantly became sightseeing; the quick change is a rush of delightful vertigo.

The stiff breeze we felt in the parking lot was, up here, gusty wind, strong enough to discourage one from casually peering over a cliff edge.

At the northern side a man and his kids were trying to fly a kite. My son and I looked at each other, wide-eyed, both amused and concerned. A strong gust could pull the kite guy over the edge. While he had a constitutional right to court death, I worried about the kids.

He quickly gave up, not it seems from a sudden attack of good sense. He discovered that it’s really, really hard to fly an uncooperative kite in winds going one way, then another almost simultaneously.

With death-by-kite off the table we circled around, to the east watching the chilly Little Red River curve below us. To the west, putting a severe crimp in the view, was a wastewater facility, a small university campus and assorted factories.

But if you lifted your gaze the hills clustered around Heber Springs were lovely with pastel greens from newly emerging foliage. To the south it was the same; hills like an eroded wall covered with a light green quilt.

All put together it was scenery meant for contented sighs, not oohs and ahs.

My son and I circled the top a few times, sneaked looks down drop-offs and sorted through some stones imprinted with swirls. Were they patterns from ancient sands or the outlines of a primordial plant? Or something else entirely? Of course it didn’t really matter.

Sitting there, we gave each other a look, the signal. Time to go.

We quickly lowered ourselves down, briskly passing other climbers on the way up. We gave out route advice if it was sought. At the bottom stood some little cohorts, shaking their heads, clearly not ready or willing to go up. We smiled and told them there was enough to see, even down here.

We proved ourselves right and we spent the rest of our visit climbing below Sugarloaf’s bulk, around the rocks that had fallen from above long ago. Not many people seem to venture this way, although they certainly should. Many of those who did were lazy and cowardly, littering the trail with beer cans and paper cups.

I tried to ignore the trash.

I pointed out a narrow crevice that led to the top. Years ago, climbing it had seriously challenged me. It had been scary and claustrophobic, lonely even, but good.

After swinging around north and south ends of the mountain, peering up at the sheer eastern face, we looked at each other and shrugged; time to go down. He took a steeper path down, I took one more sedate. We met up about a hundred yards down the trail.

I told him how I would run down this path when I was his age, accelerating until my body began to pass my feet. I averted disaster by grabbing trees, braking with my palms on passing trunks.

I watched as he considered my story. He smiled a tiny smile and nodded. And this was good.

Finally we were down in the car, its interior stuffy after the crazy cold swirl. I felt great, with my hands raw from levering myself around, my throat sore. The steering wheel was painfully hot on my cold hands, hot enough to require steering with my fingers.

After pulling onto the highway, one of those automatic parental glances at my son revealed not a whole lot, other than a placid and somewhat weary expression. In my mirror I saw the same expression on my face, and I smiled for both of us.