A Higher Calling Read online

  I estimate the light is about a half mile away, so I keep up my pace. A few moments later, the light veers off the trail in a different direction. I know there’s another camp over there, so it can’t be them. About ten minutes later, I spot a cluster of three headlamps again on the trail.

  “Tommy? Is that you?” I call out into the dark.

  I start running hard. I’m praying hard too. The steepest part of the trail has an eighty-degree slope to the left. If you take a wrong step, you can fall close to a hundred feet down into the rocks. Although it’s difficult to see anything clearly in the dark, I think I can make out two people huddled over a third figure lying on the ground. It must be them.

  “Hey, Tommy, is that you?” I call up the trail as I slow down. “This is Harold. Is that Dave?”

  “Yes, it’s Dave.”

  I’m still about five hundred feet away, so it’s hard to hear Tommy yelling.

  I start to realize Chad, the combat-wounded amputee of the team, isn’t with them and something is seriously wrong with Dave, our seasoned climber and team doctor. Has Chad gone on ahead? Have I missed him? Could he still be out here somewhere?

  As I get closer, I can hear better, so I continue asking questions. A Russian doctor is with them. Tommy tells me Dave has High Altitude Pulmonary Edema (HAPE), a serious type of altitude sickness. He is weak, confused, and needs help.

  “He’s in bad shape,” Tommy says.

  10

  An Extra Seventeen Swiss Francs

  for the Funeral

  HAROLD

  One dream Rachel and I shared was to see and experience as much of the world as possible. So naturally when it came time to plan our honeymoon, we were on the same page: we wanted a grand adventure, exploring as many new places as we could. Our first stop was Spain. The morning after our wedding, we drove four-plus hours to Charleston, South Carolina, to catch a military plane.

  The military has an excellent benefit: if you’re active duty, you and your dependents can fly on a military plane for free, under certain circumstances. While we were a little tired, we were excited for the adventure ahead and the uninterrupted time we’d have together. We walked out onto the tarmac and saw the massive C-17 military cargo plane pull up.

  “That looks like it could eat a normal-sized plane!” Rachel said.

  After the pilot lowered the door and we climbed in, we sat in the seats located on either side of the plane facing inward. The seats were somewhat comfortable, and they even gave us small blankets!

  “What’s in those huge pallets?” Rachel asked, pointing to the cargo in the middle of the plane. “They look like missiles.”

  I laughed. “Those are just helicopter parts.”

  RACHEL

  Well, they looked like missiles to me. The seven-hour flight was loud and freezing cold. The seats were tiny and stiff. But I was so exhausted I ended up lying down on the floor curled under my jacket and sleeping most of the way, noise and all. When I woke up, we had landed in Rota, Spain. Somehow we missed getting our passports stamped. Apparently, we were supposed to go to a police station to do that, but no one told us. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, but as we soon would find out, it put us in a scary predicament.

  We hit the ground running, and we roughed it hard-core. Seventeen countries in thirty days. We loved every minute of it. Our honeymoon adventure was a testament that money doesn’t buy you happiness. But time together and new experiences do! Nothing we did was luxurious, but everything we did was memorable. We stayed in hostels, engaging with the people around us, never really knowing where we’d end up. Positive memories you can look back on have more longevity than material objects, which will quickly lose your affection.

  Knowing this, I filmed our whole adventure to capture our memories. Every night, as Harold would get on his phone and do research to find our next destination, I would edit the footage and post videos of the day on my YouTube channel. We slowly started gaining viewers from around the world. An article about us was even published in Slovakia after they saw our video. I’m not sure what it said, though, because it was written in Slovak.*

  When we were in Switzerland, we decided to go paragliding. A girl who worked at the hostel we were staying at recommended a small company run by her dad and told us she was in training to become certified. We were trusting and thought we were getting a great deal, saving seventeen Swiss francs and avoiding the high-traffic tourist spots. Two men were our guides. One was a seasoned paraglider decked out in professional gear, including a nice helmet and a GoPro camera. The second guy wore what looked like a bicycle helmet, elbow pads, and a camera duct-taped to a pole.

  HAROLD

  Obviously, I chose the first guy with the brand-new equipment. Rachel gave me a look of complete shock that I was happily entrusting my new bride to a guy with sketchy gear. But honestly, I didn’t think twice about it. Clearly, I had a lot to learn about marriage!

  The girl from the hostel went first. She put her gear on and started running across the top of the mountain. As she approached the ledge, she started to jump, trying to catch flight, but when she was about six feet in the air, she nose-dived into the ground about fifty feet from the ledge. My immediate response was “Uhhhhhhh…is this safe to do?” My life started flashing in front of my eyes, but I gained some confidence when I looked over at Rachel’s janky gear, most of which looked homemade. Glad I’m not in Rachel’s shoes, I thought after seeing what had just happened.

  I pictured the coyote from the cartoon Looney Tunes running off the cliff, pedaling his feet in midair as fast as he could and then falling straight down like a rock. That’s all, folks.

  “Totally fine,” my guy said in his Swiss accent. “No worries at all. She is still in training. Just run off the cliff, and the wind takes it from there.”

  That’s when I regretted letting Rachel go with the other guy, as well as taking the cheaper paragliding service just to save a few bucks. At least if one of us dies, we’ll have an extra seventeen Swiss francs for the funeral.

  Rachel went first, taking off in a full sprint for the edge of the mountain and then soaring into the air. Turns out her guy was a pro, just with semipro gear. I had taken her phone so I could shoot some video, even though she was reluctant to let me use it.

  “I promise I won’t drop it,” I said to Rachel, waving her phone as I took off after her.

  While my guide and I were running across the bumpy ground and about to lift off, the phone fell out of my pants pocket and hit the ground. It started flipping end over end. I knew if it fell over the edge, we were never going to see it again. I’d certainly have some explaining to do, and all our honeymoon video footage and photos would be lost. I still don’t know how, but I reached down and grabbed it while on the run, right before I launched out over a three-thousand-foot drop.

  RACHEL

  Semipro gear? Ha! He looked more like a kid riding his bike for the first time. I’m sure as they read this right now, my mom and dad are super thrilled with Harold for leaving me with Mr. Semipro! Actually, I 100 percent know that my mom is blowing up his phone while she says to my dad, “Billllll! You’re not going to believe this!”

  The Lord must have been looking out for Harold, because I probably would have made him go on a ridiculous hunt through the mountains looking for my phone had he dropped it!

  Paragliding in Switzerland will go down as one of the more epic parts of our honeymoon, janky gear and all. Another memorable adventure was hitchhiking across Greece. It started when we thought the cheapest way to get from Italy to Greece was by taking a big, rickety, empty, old cargo ship. It looked like a cruise ship from the outside, so I thought, Oh, this will be fun. It was the furthest thing from fun! It was packed with truckers who’d driven their 18-wheelers onto the ship. There was nothing to do, and no one had a private room. The ship had a small c
ommon room full of what looked like old airplane seats arranged in rows, and that was where we were supposed to stay. It was sketchy as all get-out!

  HAROLD

  There was one guy who was a little different, though. His name was Gerry, and he was well dressed in a dark blue cardigan sweater. We gravitated toward him, and I struck up a conversation. I found out he had business interests in Italy and Russia and owned a “small” villa in Greece, where he was currently transporting one of his cars. I talked to him for hours while the ship crossed from Lecce, Italy, to Athens, Greece. Gerry said he was planning to get off the ship one stop earlier than we were.

  “Where are you planning to go?” he asked.

  “Eventually Istanbul, but we might stop in Athens,” I said.

  “Hey, why don’t you ride with me to the villa? We’re right on the beach. It’s not far from Istanbul. You can take a bus from there.”

  It seems strange now to plan a ride across Greece with a complete stranger during our honeymoon, but it made sense at the time. Plus, Rachel was beyond ready to get off that ship! Soon we were in Gerry’s car, bumping along rural roads. I was sharing life stories and practically becoming best friends with him, while Rachel sprawled out in the back seat, catching up on the lack of sleep from the boat ride. I think she slept the entire eight-hour drive.

  We were in Greece for only two days before we hopped on a bus headed to Turkey. After a few hours, the bus stopped, so we all passed up our passports to get stamped as we crossed over the border. Or so we thought. A few minutes later, we heard a man at the front of the bus say, “I need the two Americans.” Rachel and I looked at each other and started to panic. We knew we were only about three hundred miles from the Syrian border and that our situation had the potential to go south if they found out I was in the US military.

  The movie Taken flashed through my head. We reluctantly stood up, grabbed our backpacks, and headed toward the front of the bus while everyone stared at us. A customs officer led us inside the border security facility and made us wait in the hallway. We sat there for forty minutes. No one would talk to us. Then two officers pulled us into an interrogation room with a metal table and what looked like a two-way mirror. One of them said, “How did you get here?”

  We tried to explain, but the questions kept coming, rapid fire.

  “How long have you been here? You don’t have any paperwork. How did you get into Europe?”

  Finally, we realized the problem: we were trying to leave the European Union without stamps in our passports from landing in Spain. So, in their eyes, we weren’t even officially there.

  RACHEL

  It wasn’t an interrogation room. It was more of an office with a table, chairs, and some papers. I kept trying to tell them I could show them video footage on my phone of every single day of our trip, but they weren’t interested. They were very suspicious and wanted documented proof of how we’d gotten into the EU with no passport stamp. I found a receipt and showed them a video of us getting on the plane. Our bus driver then came in and threatened to leave us because he had been waiting for so long. Thankfully, Harold was not about to let him leave us in the middle of nowhere and very sternly told him, “You will not leave.” So he waited.

  Finally, after enough charades and their good cop/bad cop routine, they released us. We got back on the bus and rolled into Turkey, only to discover we had arrived during the busy Ramadan holiday. We deeply appreciated every cultural experience, and so did our viewers. I received lots of comments about how people felt like they were on this journey with us and were thankful we were sharing.

  Our honeymoon was far from typical, but the experiences we shared are priceless. The most memorable moments aren’t the times we spent the extra money for a taxi or ate at a nice restaurant. They’re the times when life didn’t go as planned. It was during these times that we learned the importance of being a team. It’s the not-so-perfect moments that teach you to lean on each other, laugh together despite the circumstances, and navigate unforeseen challenges. I watched Harold step up in a bunch of ways. While we were going from one unfamiliar place to another, he always took the lead, and my trust in him grew.

  We’d made our way through seventeen countries and were finally back home. But the adventure hadn’t ended. I noticed our first day back that my period was two months late. “Holy smokes!” This was not normal for me, so we anxiously headed to Target to buy a pregnancy test.

  We both had mixed feelings. If I were pregnant, we’d have a baby by the time Harold left for his Everest expedition and I’d be alone as a new mom while he climbed the highest mountain in the world. It was a strange feeling. I went to the bathroom inside Target, did what needed to be done, quickly shoved the test back into the box without looking at it, and headed back to the car.

  We sat in our car in the middle of the Target parking lot, staring at the pregnancy test. What was it going to be? We held our breath and waited.

  HAROLD

  In true Rachel fashion, she took out her phone and started recording as we each looked at the results of the pregnancy test. This was the first pregnancy test she had ever taken, and neither of us knew how to read it properly.

  “Is it supposed to be one line or two?” I asked, leaning over the center console to Rachel’s side of the car.

  I’m not sure why we didn’t just buy the one that said “pregnant” or “not pregnant.” That would have been easier. We were both feeling anxious. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for.

  Only one line appeared, which meant we were not pregnant.

  We were mostly relieved, but the possibility of being pregnant stirred up so many emotions, and we were starting to get used to the idea of possibly having a baby soon. It wasn’t surprising that our crazy monthlong backpacking, hitchhiking, scuba-diving honeymoon adventure probably led to Rachel’s period being thrown all out of whack.

  We couldn’t wait to start a family, but according to the pregnancy test, it looked like we’d be waiting a little longer.

  * Watch our entire trip at Earls.org/honeymoon.

  April 29, 2016

  I see Tommy and the Russian doctor talking to Dave and checking his vitals. They’re trying to determine if he can walk back to camp if we help him. Dave slurs his words and appears disoriented, almost like he’s in a drunken state.

  “Where’s Chad?” I ask.

  “Dave says he went ahead to get help.”

  Dave is an intelligent and highly skilled climber. He’s someone I look up to for his knowledge and climbing experience. Seeing that something like this can happen to one of our best, at a relatively simple part of the climb, is eye opening for me.

  We still need to find Chad.

  Since I didn’t pass him and he’s not in our camp, he must be out here somewhere. Is he suffering from HAPE too? Is he injured? Does he have a problem with his prosthesis? Maybe it malfunctioned or got damaged.

  A couple of Russians arrive with oxygen for Dave, and together we get him moving toward our camp. After carefully walking with Dave arm in arm across the frozen, rocky path leading back to Base Camp, we settle in the mess tent. I watch the Russian treat Dave with oxygen, hydration, and some Kit Kat bars. He can barely sit up and is acting loopy, like he’s not all there.

  A figure walks into the tent and greets us. “Well, hey, guys,” Chad says.

  He had gone to another camp near the trail to try to get help. The amputated nub on his leg is bruised badly from all the extra walking as he sought help for Dave. When Dave started getting sick, they slowed down. Soon Dave could barely walk as exhaustion set in and the temperature dropped. Chad was a hero, carrying both packs—his own on his back and Dave’s on his front—while going ahead to get help.

  We bond in the mess tent this night, taking care of Dave and trying to cheer him up. The team rallied when we realized guys were in trou
ble. We perform better when we know a team has our back. No one hesitated to sprint into that cold, dark, dangerous night to find our two missing teammates. Would Dave have made it back to camp without help? I don’t know. I feel honored to be part of a team like this.

  We quickly learn that one of our biggest challenges is keeping the team together while we are climbing, due to the harsh conditions and everyone’s unique climbing pace. I don’t like the feeling of being separated from any of the team members. Since I came up with the idea for the expedition and helped start USX, I feel responsible.

  We try to fix this problem by redistributing weight among one another’s packs to slow down the faster climbers and speed up the slower ones. It works! For a couple of hours, at least. We also pair up into buddy teams based on climbing speeds.*

  * What is blatantly obvious now, that I wish we’d known then, is that it is better to climb as a team than to split into buddy pairs. In pairs, more things can go wrong and there are fewer people to help. Sadly, our failure to stick together as a team put us in an extremely dangerous and costly situation later on the mountain.

  11

  That Could Have Been Me

  HAROLD

  I was so caught up in planning our epic honeymoon that I didn’t exactly have a plan for where we’d be living when we got back. Although I had graduated, I was going to be stationed at West Point for another four to six months so I could fully recover from my shoulder surgery.

  After we flew back to the States, we made our way across the parking lot to our car. We’d left it in long-term parking, and it was filled to the roof with all our wedding gifts, almost exclusively for the kitchen. Rachel and I burst out laughing when we saw the car, forgetting how packed it really was. There was a blender, a complete china set, and a bunch of new bath towels pressed up against the window. To this day, our bath towels have sun-stained brownish-yellow marks from being pressed against the window for thirty-five days!