It used to be that the Hillary Step was a Leviathan,
a Mecca,
something about which to dream;
a vertical face of solid rock –
juxtaposed against an altitude no human has ever been intended to inhabit –
the Hillary Step was the most welcome sight
in all of the Death Zone.
It used to be a rite of passage.
It used to be that it would take two months of asceticism and misery
while occupying the least hospitable climate on Earth –
all of it endured to stand atop the ceiling of the planet
for the 120 seconds it takes fingers to start to freeze –
to successfully ascend Mount Everest;
the Hillary Step was the ultimate challenge
before the pure and inimitable rapture
of reaching the summit.
It used to be a reward.
It used to be that conquering the Hillary Step
was synonymous with auspice; was synonymous with expertise.
The most renowned boots in all of mountaineering
each grappled with this ordeal of limestone and ice –
the final obstacle before successfully having climbed
as high as anyone can possibly climb –
named after the first to stand upon the virgin snow
at the very top of the world.
It used to be that laymen stayed on the ground.
It used to be that scaling all 8849 metres –
that’s 29,032 feet for you Americans –
required the most technical of skill;
only the truly elite could even fathom
ever having the privilege
to challenge life and death
upon the heights of the Himalayan range.
It used to be that there wasn’t a billionaire class.
It used to be that mountains in Nepal were pristine,
untouched,
unsullied by humanity,
like a moment lost and frozen in time;
71 years and 50,000 climbers later,
pollution and waste decorate the slopes of Mount Everest
while the glaciers shrink slowly away.
It used to be that the planet wasn’t melting.
It used to be that the native Sherpa
wouldn’t dare disrespect the mountain they called Chomolungma –
the “Mother Goddess of the World,”
a sacred playground for the Tibetan Gods –
by polluting her flanks with our painfully human foibles
just to get to the top.
It used to be nothing but poverty in Kathmandu, before Everest became a business.
But things change,
and tectonic plates shift,
and crowds multiply,
and climates warm;
and what was once an accomplishment
is now simply a transaction
irrevocably disfiguring the sacred path to a summit
which the Buddhists warned us not to climb in the first place.
So now that it’s gone –
a victim of chaos theory
and our inevitable descent into entropy,
a relic to never again be joyfully vanquished
by future generations of high-altitude mountaineers –
I cannot help but mourn what once was,
because I really miss the Hillary Step.
Shannon Frost Greenstein (She/They) is the author of “The Wendigo of Wall Street,” a novella forthcoming with Emerge Literary Journal. A former Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy, her work has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. Follow her at shannonfrostgreenstein.com or on Twitter at @ShannonFrostGre. Insta: @zarathustra_speaks