Thursday, March 20, 1986

Frank gasped a few times in the cold, thin air, leaning over with his hands on his knees, and then straightened up to check his watch. 6:20. Good. He was right on time. Then he shook his head and grinned wryly. Duh! I need a watch to tell me the sun isn’t up.

He pulled his blanket out of his knapsack, spread it on a reasonably flat boulder at the edge of the white scree, and sat down gratefully. I must be getting old. I’m still out of breath. He pulled his scriptures out of his knapsack and was starting to open them when the humor of that assessment hit him and he almost laughed out loud. Provo, Utah! The only place in the country where a 24-year-old who can run up a mountainside thinks he’s old. … Or worries about being single. He shook his head again and laid the book aside.

Frank clasped his hands over his knees, bowed his head, wrinkled his forehead in earnest concentration, and started the conversation he’d come here for. Dear Father, what dost Thou want me to do with my life? And … well, can I please be happy? I don’t mean to be ungrateful. I’m alive and healthy and Thou hast blessed me with talents and opportunities. I know that. But, I’m checking everything off on the good-boy list, and, well, is this all there is? I’m not exactly depressed, but I’m not sure I’m really happy either. Is there something else I should be doing with my life? This would be a convenient time to find out about it considering I’ve already done my interviews for med school and I don’t even know if I really want to be a doctor, or if it’s just checking off one more thing on the list of What You Do. So, I’m not really asking for a sign, but I know Thou hast all power and can do whatever is needed to get me the message. Whatever it is, I’ll do it. I ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

Frank opened his eyes and sat waiting for an answer. Nothing happened. He tried to keep his mind open to whatever God wanted to tell him, but thoughts skittered across his mind like the mountain chipmunk sneaking towards his blanket in brief dashes and terrified freezes. Wow, he breathes fast. I wonder if you could use that to figure out how much he eats in a day. One glucose for every six oxygens … pCO2 around 28 … maybe a cc per breath … Wait, come on, Frank, focus. A long pause. Still nothing. When did I get the idea to come up here for an answer? Kelly Canbridge’s face appeared in his mind, looking earnest and beautiful teaching Sunday school last month. Oh yeah, Exodus. Moses, Sinai, holy ground, “put off thy shoes from off thy feet”. … Where’s that verse about “draw near unto me and I will draw near unto thee”? D&C something, I think, or maybe it’s in the New Testament. He reached for his scriptures to look it up, stopped, and shook his head ruefully. I wouldn’t hear it if God was yelling at me. I can not shut up my mind.

In the Sunday school class that day Frank had been sitting where he could see Y Mountain through the classroom window even when he was actually paying attention to Kelly’s lesson. He’d been watching the mountain when she’d said, “so, when we need divine guidance, we can do what Moses did—find holy ground.” She’d been talking about simple quiet and peace, the temple or any place with a closed door, but somehow, with his birthday coming up on the first day of spring this year, the idea of an early morning trek up the mountain for a prayer at daybreak had seemed obvious. Now, it mostly seems cold. And melodramatic. And maybe just dumb.

The watch read 6:29. Frank bowed his head again. Lord, I know it’s probably silly to expect you to play by my timetable. But I am actually trying to listen, if you have something to tell me. He waited. He tried to clear his mind. Blank slate. Ready to listen. Still nothing. He opened his eyes. It looked brighter even though the valley was still in shadow. He checked his watch again. 6:30. Well, that’s it. Official dawn. Not that impressive. Right. Well, what did you expect to see at dawn on the west slope of a mountain? He pulled out his scriptures again. I guess if I’m up here I may as well do my morning scripture study anyway. I really don’t feel like walking back down yet. And who knows, maybe I’ll find an answer in here.

The scriptures opened to his bookmark in 2nd Nephi. “As dead, having no life neither death … happiness nor misery.” Sounds like how I feel these days. Not even alive enough to be dead. Oh well. At least I suppose that’s an accomplishment. A sarcastic half-smile pulled at his lips as Frank looked out over the valley again.

Just then, a bright flash across the valley made him blink. Something across the lake reflected the sun, and Frank realized that the west end of the valley was just now painted in sunshine. A light breeze began to brush his face. At the same moment, he startled to a woman’s voice behind him, singing. He jumped up, whirled around, and froze. Open-mouthed, he listened to the lines from the hymn: “The morning breaks, the shadows flee. …” If this isn’t an angel, forget the angels, I’ll take this! His mouth gradually closed into a smile. She was only 30 or 40 feet away, and she must have seen him, but she wasn’t paying any attention. The breeze now and again blew her dark hair back from her face and pressed her white dress against her breasts and thighs. Stop it, Frank, there must be some category of sin for thinking about an angel’s body that way. She looked rapturously happy. Her whole face was alive with every word of the music: “The dawning of a brighter day / Majestic rises on the world.”

She finally looked at Frank and smiled, and he realized he was standing there staring with what must be an idiotic grin on his face. He walked over towards her, suddenly awkward with his feet and arms and generally feeling like a seventh-grader. He smiled what he hoped was a debonair smile and croaked, “Hi.” And winced at the inanity.

She just smiled for an answer, but her eyes seemed to say she didn’t care if it was eloquent. Then she looked past Frank and pointed at the valley below them. “It’s amazing to me how the sun seems to paint everything. It’s not just brighter, it’s more colorful. The whole world seems to come alive.”

Frank couldn’t help thinking something about differential sensitivity of rod and cone cells in the retina, but looking straight at her all he could think to say was, truthfully, “I was just noticing the same thing. The whole world looks brighter.”

She smiled again, then reached out her hand to him. “My name’s Christine.”

He shook her hand. “Frank Kimball. Your singing was beautiful. You’re beautiful.” He suddenly realized he’d spoken his thoughts. He felt his cheeks redden and decided to try to salvage a real conversation. “So, um, you come up here often?” Ouch! That sounds like the stupidest line ever.

She just laughed, a laugh that somehow sounded like the only natural and obvious response to a world that was perfect in every way. “I’ve never been here before. I …” She looked like she was about to say something else, looked away briefly, and continued, “I heard it was something you should really do if you live in Provo.” She looked down across the mountain. “You know what’s interesting is that here we are as close as you can get to the Y, and you can’t really see it. I mean, you can see the white rocks and stuff but it doesn’t look much like a Y from up here. Life is like that, don’t you think? You have to get away from your day-to-day sometimes to get the right perspective.” She turned to look at Frank. “How about you? Are you up here every morning?”

Frank smiled and shook his head. He was suddenly tempted to tell her he ran up the mountain every morning before class just as a warm-up, but somehow her eyes seemed to compel honesty. “I’ve been up here a couple of times, but, well, honestly, today I wanted to get up here by myself and try to find out what God wants me to do with my life.” She opened her eyes wide, blinked once, then cocked her head and smiled quizzically. “But you were reading!”

Frank answered defensively, “Well, I mean, studying the scriptures seems like a reasonable thing to do when you’re looking for answers.”

Her forehead wrinkled a little. She looks so cute like that. “But seriously, why come all the way up a mountain to look for an answer in a book? Look at this!” She took his hand and swept her other arm across the valley. “Look! How can God hope to get you a message if you won’t look at what his hand has written on his biggest canvas?”

Frank followed Christine’s eyes. Looking out over Utah Valley, Frank suddenly noticed it—really noticed the valley. For once, instead of the houses and streetlights and billboards and Cougar Stadium and I‑15, he saw the shape of the valley, the sunshine touching the opposite peak, the sheltering mountains and foothills, the river emptying into Utah Lake. All the scrabblings of mankind struck him as inconsequential shallow scratchings on the thinnest crust of the world, ephemeral graffiti on a beautiful ancient sculpture. He became aware that Christine was still holding his hand, and the warmth of her hand suddenly seemed the center of the universe. He looked at her and found her smiling at him, and suddenly, wordlessly, he discovered to his amazement that his constant mental background chatter had stopped dead, and he was perfectly at peace. A breath in, a breath out, and the perfection of the moment had passed, but he still felt ebullient, a vessel overflowing with joy.

“You’re right. You’re so right! Thank you.” For once in my life a question has an unambiguous answer, and it’s a song without words. “I know part of the answer at least.” Frank looked Christine in the eyes. “The world is beautiful.” Especially here. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly.

For the first time she looked away, still smiling but a little embarrassed.

“Hey, you look cold,” he said. “Are you ready to go? I’ve got a jacket in my backpack.”

Frank helped her on with his jacket and, feeling gallant, gave her an arm. She laughed and took his hand again as they started down the trail.

After the first few switchbacks, Christine asked, “you said you came up here to find out what to do with your life. So what do you want to do with your life?”

“Well, I mean, I don’t know. That’s the whole point. I’ve got applications in to med schools and it seems like a good thing to do but I don’t know if it’s really the best option.”

“No, I don’t mean what are you going to do, I mean what do you want to do?” She saw from Frank’s expression that he had no idea what she meant. “Look,” she went on, “what do you enjoy doing? What do you do for fun?”

“I don’t know. Nothing exciting, I guess. I really haven’t thought about it that much. I mean, when people ask me what I like to do, my standard answer is ‘hiking and weightlifting and reading.’ But I guess if you judge by where I spend my time, I like learning stuff. I love reading almost anything, from science fiction to Shakespeare to biography. Even popular physics books, but I never admit that because most people just shake their heads and look at me funny when they try to think of physics being fun. I love my experimental psychology class, how the brain works—maybe the ultimate mystery in science. And I like people-watching.”

“People-watching?”

“You know, like if I’m in the cafeteria, or at the library and tired of studying, I love to sit there and watch people walk by or talk to their friends or whatever. What I really like is eavesdropping on arguments, to see what crazy stuff people are talking about. Have you ever noticed that most of what people say in an argument has nothing to do with what they think they’re talking about? And most of it is totally illogical. And I try to guess what people are thinking about. You have lots of clues, like what they’re carrying or how fast they’re walking or whether their shoulders are slumped or how much makeup they have on, and especially what they’re looking at. Kind of like Harriet the Spy, if you ever read that?” He stopped before going on and looked up at Christine apologetically. “Oh. Sorry, I’m not letting you get a word in edgewise. I kind of get going on something and don’t shut up.”

Christine just smiled back. “My point is just that if you’re going to spend decades in a career, you should do something you like. It sounds like what you really like is learning new things and figuring out what makes people tick, so the question is whether medical school prepares you for a career as a perpetual student and people-watcher.”

“Huh. You know, you’re amazing. That’s the first really new advice I’ve heard. I guess Dr. Becknard would be the one to talk to about that.” Frank started to plan that conversation mentally, then caught himself. “So, how about you? What are your life plans?”

“Musical theater. Since I was a kid. I’ve always been the one dressing up, singing at the top of my lungs, dancing, whatever. I’ve seen Seven Brides for Seven Brothers I don’t know how many times.”

“Um … I suppose that’s a musical?”

Christine laughed. “You are hopeless! I can see I have a lot of work to do to get you to the point where you can carry on a conversation with any of my friends, or for that matter anyone whose nose isn’t stuck in a book. Look. This weekend I’m in The Pirates of Penzance. Why don’t you come see the show?”

The conversation meandered pleasantly down the switchbacks. Halfway down from the Y, reaching for a water bottle, Frank noticed his wristwatch and burst out laughing.

“What?” asked Christine.

“Well, it’s just that I remembered being surprised that dawn hadn’t come when it was 6:30, when the paper said it would be dawn.”

Christine turned an amused gaze on him. “You check the newspaper to see whether the sun is up?”

“Come on, I looked yesterday to make sure I’d be up here early enough. Anyway, it was a few minutes later, when you started singing, when I saw the sun light up the valley, but I just now realized that really was 6:30 after all. I always set my watch 3 minutes ahead to make sure I’m not late.”

She just laughed again. “You set your watch to the wrong time on purpose? Why would you want to know what time it isn’t? You’re a strange man, Frank Kimball.” But she squeezed his hand and smiled. They walked along another minute or so, then Frank asked, “Christine, obviously you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but when I asked you why you climbed Y Mountain today, I got the impression there was more to the story than you told me.”

She didn’t answer for a minute, and Frank was about to reassure her she didn’t need to say anything when he noticed she was blushing. Finally she said, “Okay, the truth was I also came up here to ask God about something.” A pause. “I’ll probably regret telling you this, but you’ve been very open with me.” She sneaked a glance at him and then, deciding to go on, stopped walking and looked at him. “I came up here to pray for help finding a man who actually cared what God wanted him to do with his life.”

For once in his life, Frank knew better than to say anything. He put his arms around her and kissed her softly on the lips.

They walked very slowly the rest of the way down, and then on to campus … and Frank didn’t worry even once about being late to chemistry class.