Leaderboard

An hour along, my monthly acoustic jam had lost its vibe. Two guys were playing their guitars so timidly I could scarcely hear them. The other was a talented newcomer, but curiously nervous and hyper. No one else knew his songs, so as he played them, the rest of us gradually dropped out, leaving him and the bass player to finish his tunes. We meet in a tiny art gallery that occasionally draws a visitor or two while we play. I was heaving a sigh when two young women entered, pushed in their wheelchairs by their attendants. May we listen, they asked. Of course, we said, as we welcomed them. The attendants parked their charges next to me and pulled up seats. The women in the wheelchairs were severely disabled. I smiled at them as my heart ached. They couldn't smile back, but I sensed that they understood their surroundings. One extended her arm, reaching for the bass player, trying to touch the source of the music. I turned my chair to face them. It was my turn to pass out a song. As usual, I was overstocked with ballads. I need something upbeat -- okay, this will do, I thought: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown. Let's start a fight, I cheerfully announced, and kicked it off. I nodded to my jam mates and played for the new arrivals. What they heard or felt, I had no way of knowing, but the song got through. I could tell; don't ask me how. They lingered for another couple of songs, then their escorts said goodbye and wheeled them out. I fumbled with the music on my stand. For a few brief minutes, these young women, mute and immobile, lit up the room. Or so it seemed, from my chair.

Now the mountain ahead reveals its full, awesome height. Seven years -- 4,151 hours of hiking, as it were -- have put scarcely any distance between me and base camp. I have yet to even set foot on the Khumbu icefall. No, I'm not climbing with oxygen bottles, crampons, and a ladder on my back. I'm practicing guitar. I need not fear -- like anyone who literally approaches Sagarmatha -- being crushed by a block of ice the size of a ten story office building. My guitar mountain is motor skills and music theory, not marble and limestone. Ice won't crush me. But expectations, comparisons, or discouragement just might, as the past year has reminded me. And with this year came a new and disturbing awareness of my age -- so gradually, but oh, so insidiously making its presence felt, as if the grade is steepening. It might take me another seven years to finish the course. Maybe seventeen. Maybe I will never summit my guitar mountain. Yet I'm still climbing, through the disappointments, the mild embarrassments, the setbacks. I rest. I recalibrate. Perhaps my energy and focus aren't quite what they used to be. But I can remind myself that I'm now equipped with three real supports that I didn't have when I originally set out. There’s knowing that I've met every challenge presented so far. Maybe it took five times longer than I expected, but I got there. What’s more, small miracles keep appearing. Help has always materialized when I needed it, sometimes in surprising forms. Best of all, I now find myself surrounded by fellow climbers, beginners and experts, who constantly remind me of the joy to be found on our musical path. They are my sherpas. We have each other's backs. I will never see the Himalaya from Sagarmatha’s summit at 29,000 feet. The mountain gods bestow that privilege upon only a handful of worthy mortals. But I have seen the Himalaya while perched a modest 5,000 feet in the Kathmandu valley: from the magnificent tip of sacred Machapuchare in the west over to the great goddess of the heavens herself. Even from the lowlands, it was breathtaking — a soul-stirring vista worth every step of the trip. So I climb.