Backpacker Magazine – May 2005

The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Scott Williamson

To hike from Mexico to Canada and back, a man needs strength and speed and luck. He needs something else, too. If only he knew what it was.

by: Steve Friedman

You talk to him again that spring. You and Michelle have driven up north and you're going to hike to a waterfall that Kenny took you to once, down a remote canyon of the American River. You call him from a pay phone, near the river. Does Kenny remember the waterfall? Can he give you some tips on how to get there? Does he? Can he? There's a slot canyon, and you can rappel down it, and the bottom is hidden, but unbelievably beautiful, another world! It's incredible! It's amazing! Kenny is so enthusiastic, shouting so loud, you have to hold the phone away from your ear, smiling. You remember that. It's funny the things you remember. Michelle, standing next to you, can hear him, too. She has never met Kenny, but she has heard you talk about him, has seen your scrapbooks filled with pictures and writings from him. You don't know it, but she worries about you a lot. This is the first time she hears his voice, and she loves how it makes you smile. You hear from him one more time--in early September. He calls and leaves a message--"Hey, it's me, call me back," but you're busy. Would things have turned out differently if you had called him?

You don't know it, but things are bad. The sadness isn't coming and going anymore. It's staying. He checks himself into the hospital, but that doesn't work. He takes medication, but that doesn't work. Now he's doing free solo climbs, running riskier and more dangerous falls. He talks to people about kayaking off Yosemite Falls with a parachute. He talks about skydiving in a kayak, "to see how it handles."

Kenny's mom tries to help, but she doesn't know what to do. She wishes Kenny had a kindred spirit in his family--someone who could understand him. But his dad and his older brother are doctors, nose-to-the-grindstone kind of men, and Kenny has never related to that life. He has a younger sister, but what can a younger sister do? What can a mother do? Kenny's mom thinks of you. She worries about Kenny all the time, but she never worries about him when he's with you. She tells Kenny--okay, maybe she nags him a little--why doesn't he call you? Why doesn't he pick up the phone so the two of you can plan another one of your epic hikes together? But he doesn't call.

He makes eight trips to the hospital, and the doctors do their best, adjust his meds, but each trip is worse than the last. When he leaves the eighth time, he's so desperate, so crestfallen, his mom tells him she doesn't want him to ever have to go back and he says he doesn't want to go back either.

You pick up the phone on the 1st of October, 2002. No one has heard from Kenny in four days and Kenny's mom is scared, she asks if you know where he is. She calls back on the 5th. Searchers have found his truck, parked near the top of a rocky bluff. They had combed the area for days, with no luck, and then one of the searchers had looked down and seen a bear at the bottom of the cliff. It was feeding on Kenny's body.

When Kenny's mom is going through her son's things, she finds a note. It's addressed to you. It's a goodbye note. He didn't want to go back to the hospital. He hated his pills. He didn't see any other way out. You give the eulogy, on the banks of the American River, where Kenny loved to hike and fish and raft. You tell the 400 mourners that you have lost your best friend. Three other speakers say the same thing. Weird, how such a young man, carrying so much sadness, could have so many best friends.

After Kenny's friends speak, the preacher rises, walks to the front of the crowd. He begins to talk and at that instant a flock of ducks flies overhead, quacking, and they land behind him, on the river. He raises his voice and they quack louder. The preacher keeps trying, but the ducks quack so loud no one can hear what he's saying. You and Michelle look at each other. "It's him," she says.