Susan Oakey-Baker, Finding Jim (Rocky Mountain Books, 2013).
Joy and woe are
woven fine,
A clothing for
the soul divine,
Under every
grief and pine,
Runs a joy with
silken twine.
It is right it
should be so,
We were made
for joy and woe,
And when this
we rightly know,
Through the
world we safely go.
William Blake
I met with Sue
for an hour Harvest Thanksgiving weekend at Whistler to discuss her published
book Finding Jim as the sun turned to
the west–autumn trees spoiled us with their flaming red, rust and yellow
hues. Sue had recently returned from her 15th
climb of Kilimanjaro to raise funds for Alzheimer’s–her first trip to the
summit of Kilimanjaro was with Jim Haberl and the trip is poignantly and
honestly recounted in Finding Jim (chapter
4).
Many of us
remember, with predictable understated Canadian patriotism, the day Jim Haberl
reached the summit of K2 in the summer of 1993–he and Dan Culver were the
first Canadians to do so. The climb was marred by the death of Dan Culver who died
on the descent. Haberl recounted, in evocative and graphic detail, the climb in
K2: Dreams and Reality (1994). Haberl
continued his mountaineering tales with a follow up book, Risking Adventure: Mountaineering Journeys Around the World (1997).
Risking Adventure was dedicated “To
Sue, my partner in the biggest adventure of all-life”. Haberl in the Acknowledgements,
doffed his grateful cap to Sue once again—“And a very special thanks goes out
to Sue Oakey, who supports who I am and gives me perspective”. Jim Haberl died
in an avalanche in the University Range in Wrangel-St. Elias National Park in
April 1999, and in 2006, the ACC-Jim Haberl Hut was opened in the Tantalus
Range in the Coastal Mountains (Cloudburst: Fall/Winter 2006, pgs. 22-23). I remember,
with some fondness, the ACC week trip in 2006 to the Tantalus Range to
celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ACC–the Haberl Hut was ever
in our sights and imagination—it opened a few weeks before our trek.
Finding Jim is a fast paced and energetic book (44 chapters) that,
in a vulnerable and raw sort of way, retells the intense phase of Jim-Sue’s
relationship in the 1990s and, more to the telling point, walks the reader, in
a tender and transparent way, into Sue’s extended mourning phase after Jim’s
death in 1999—there is nothing opaque in this see into the soul book. There
can be no doubt that Sue had knitted deeply with Jim (Goethe calls this “elective
affinities”) and such an unexpected death shredded the knitting and unravelled
Sue’s hopes and dreams for a life that was supposed to unfold well and
successfully. Joy (mixed with some early confusion in the early relationship)
tended to dominate until the death of
Jim altered the script of the drama–woe entered Sue’s life and joy was
dimmed in the process of mourning searching for meaning–there is a surgical
like precision as Sue touches, in a vivid and deft way, her many feelings and
reactions to Jim’s tragic death.
The burnished
gold of Finding Jim is the way Sue
does not flinch from feeling her pain, trying to ease such suffering and the
varied places she goes (where she and Jim had spent life giving moments) to
what the Celts called “thin places” where she might refind Jim. Death is never
easy, but it is doubly difficult when it occurs at the beginning of lives that
had much promise, a promise that will never be fulfilled. Life does go on,
though, after death and to Sue’s credit, she courageously lived into and
through the mourning season. Each chapter in the mourning quest is packed with
Sue’s intense longing to find Jim yet knowing Jim, at one level, is gone and
can never be found. There is a certain comfort in being at places, wearing
clothes etc, that were there in the bonding stage of the relationship–letting
go is more difficult and refinding how to live again equally demanding–such
are some of the deeper themes of Finding
Jim.
There are tender
letters in the book, fine mountaineering photos near the end of the book and many
wise quotes worth meditating on for those seeking a way onward and forward
after the unexpected death of a soul friend. Sue’s journey forward is one of
seeing that joy and woe are part of the texture and tapestry of life–when both
dwell well and wisely in the soul and mind, the pilgrimage through time is made
in a more mature way—never easy to live through, though, when the tragic side
of life rears its demanding head and will not leave.
Sue brings to a
close Finding Jim with a parable (pages 354-356) not to miss—the
brief tale compares/contrasts a shallower view of what it means to be human
(all bluster and bravado) with a more honest, soft hearted and humane way of
living life that recognizes the transformative power of suffering. The book
does end in a rather positive way in which Sue is married again and has a
child, but most of the book is more about Sue processing, in her unique way,
Jim’s death. The book, in some sense, should be called “Finding Sue” or “Sue
Finding” for the simple reason that it is more about Sue in search of
herself–Jim is the icon and portal she must see and live through to go deeper
on such a quest, to ascend such a peak from which more can be seen and sifted
through.
Finding Jim is as much about Sue’s journey into insight as it is
about entering the larger perennial issues of life—-knitted relationships
ending, death and life, joy and woe, hopes dashed and dreams crushed yet living
forward—each and all can tell their own story of such growth experiences, but
Sue’s confessional approach and limpid prose makes for a read that is virtually
impossible to put down—I read the book in a few hours sitting on a mountain ridge
on a clear blue canopy day after fresh
snow returned for another season and autumn was fading–autumn brings
endings, the cold of winter can be hard to live through, but spring does return–such
is the latent message of Finding Jim.
Sue has clearly demonstrated she is a writer of much passion and skill—we await
a sequel with more delving and deeper dives—it seems a book on Kilimanjaro
might be in the offing.
Ron Dart