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I have suffered, from time to time, from insomnia as a product of anxiety. I haven’t seen a doctor about it — I don’t see a doctor about anything — but I know it is insomnia (because I can’t sleep) and I have decided it is anxiety because my experience seems to fit the definition of the word. I can’t sleep, my heart will race, and I get very warm and irritated. So it’s either anxiety or menopause and I am placing my bets on the former. It is my understanding, however, that most people who suffer from insomnia, or just have trouble sleeping at night from time to time, as a result of anxiety are so bothered because aspects of their life lead them to be anxious. Job, marriage, kids, performance anxiety, ballet class, post-prandial gas: all fodder that occupy the mind at night when one should be trying to sleep. Anxiety is a product of fear and all these people have something to fear in their life that cause their wakefulness. What I fear is not being able to sleep. I am not sure how it came about but when I lie awake at night all I can think about is that I can’t fall sleep.

As it turns out: I value sleep more than I do my own life. Hence the earplugs; hence the comfortable bed; hence the locked door, silenced pets, black sheets duct taped to the windows, unplugged electronic and telephonic items; hence the fierce curfew placed on all living organism inside my residence. The idea that my slumber might be interrupted horrifies me. I am not sure how this initially began but I have some theories and this is one of them:

On a fourth of July when I was young and living in Illinois, my father took me to see the first Batman movie in the theatre with Jack Nickleson portraying The Joker. He was very scary. After the movie and some fireworks my parents said goodnight and I was left alone in my bedroom with the immediate understanding that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes I saw Mr. Nickelson’s face and heard that insane laugh — I was horrified. That night wasn’t the first time I had seen a scary movie, I was forever seeing scary movies and regretting it later, but that was the night that I would like to identify as a turning point in my fear of not being able to sleep.

After three or four trips into my parent’s bedroom, teary-eyed and complaining of demons in my head and closet, my father lost his patience. I do not blame him. For all I know he and my mother were trying to increase the population of our ever growing family and my constant interruptions were not helping. Or, perhaps, my father was just as concerned about a good night’s rest as I was. Whatever the case may have been, my father came into to my room a final time to inspect the cause of my pathetic cries and sobbing moans, and I said to my father:

“I cannot sleep; I will never sleep again; I am too scared.”

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t sleep. I don’t care. But if you don’t sleep you will die.”

And then he left, very dramatically. I did not bother him again.

What I didn’t realize then was that my father tends to guarantee immanent death whenever he is asking any of us children to stop doing something. “If you eat all those cookies, you’ll get fat and die.” “If you don’t put that toy away, later during the night you will slip on it, fall down the stairs, split your skull open, and die.” “If you don’t leave me alone, I will stab in the heart with a knife and you will bleed all over the floor and then slip on it and die.”

But back then, I may have even believed him. I tried with all my might to go to sleep. To his credit, he gave me some valuable advice in fighting my mind-demons; he suggested I imagine cleaning up in my brain whatever horror it was I saw a little at a time. What I did, was to imagine a basketball court filled with spiders and spider webs; then I dribbled my basketball and with each bounce a bit of the cobweb broke away and bit of the parquet came through. I don’t think I got cleaned up the whole court but I did fall asleep. And, though I was still scared from time to time, I was able to fight off my head demons. What I wasn’t able to shake, however, was my fear of not being able to sleep.

In Hood River Ben purchased new tires for his bicycle and I bought a special brace to aide my Achilles tendon. After trying it on in the parking lot I screamed and then immediately returned it to the pharmacy. I have never worn anything on my ankle that caused me so much pain as that brace; in fact, after that, I realized that the Ace Bandage I had been using to support my ankle really wasn’t helping either. I took it all off and road on my naked ankle and, surprisingly, it began to feel a little better.

After watching Batman Begins in a real movie theatre, Ben and I clamored back onto our bicycles, had a brief conversation with a group of teenage aliens who pretended to have something to complain about, and then headed to our campsite just outside of town. When I leave the theatre after watching an action movie, I always walk through the double doors with my own personal adventure soundtrack playing in my head; I feel like a superhero. This was a good attitude to have at the time because in order for us to get to our campsite we had to bicycle up the face of a cliff through an area known in Hood River as The Heights.

In Concord, NH, there is also an area of town called The Heights where there are shops and other nonsense but it is not particularly high up. I always thought The Heights meant “area filled with stupid stores”; however, in Hood River, they were not fooling around. This was a all-standing-all-the-time-all-the-way hill and it was the second time that day we had had to ride up it.

At the top of the cliff, I was pacified somewhat as we pedaled through the stupid store section of The Heights and just as I was about to complain of the stores and the hills and my ankle and my love, Mount Hood came into view. And whereas Mount Saint Helens and Mount Rainier are formidable and wide, Mount Hood is sharp and dramatic. Ben, who was in the middle of a phone conversation with his girlfriend while continuing to pedal, broke off mid-sentence. His girlfriend’s voice could be heard inquisitively repeating his name through the small speaker. However: Mount Hood demands silence.

It pushes itself irreverently into the sky and is rivaled only by the clouds that attempt to overwhelm it. There are no other mountains to be seen from the basin of the Hood River Valley and it soars as a lone rising peak of desolation. The lower elevation creates the impression of even greater height and the valley that rises to its base was idyllic and green and full of flowing farms and growing fields.

And I was at peace again. Staring at a 10,000+ foot snow-covered peak somehow put all my troubles into startling perspective.

DAMON: June 27th, 7:10 in the evening. Ben and I have arrived at the Tucker Park Campground on the Hood River just as the sun was setting, as we were riding out of Hood River Proper, you could see Mount Hood kind of just gasping at the edge of the cloud line and the clouds kind of rolling over it and we couldn’t tell where the snow ended and the clouds began. And we were, I guess you could say: amazed — at all that. Ben and I are both convinced that this is — between Washington and Oregon man — these are some awesome states, absolutely beautiful.

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