Night Sky Above Malibu
Jerry Erickson
September 7,
2013
Back during the
summers when I was a mountaineering guide at Beyond, and had a week in Base
Camp, I loved being assigned to radio duty at Malibu. The Beyond Base Camp is located half-way down
Princess Louisa Inlet which is narrow and enclosed with mountains on all
sides. The main summer camp at Malibu
however, is located at the mouth of Princess Louisa Inlet right where it
branches off the much larger Jervis Inlet.
Since most of the climbing routes used by Beyond are located on the
peaks along Jervis Inlet, Malibu has much better radio reception than Base Camp
for communicating with the trips.
Back in the late
70s and early 80s, the Beyond Radio Room was located just off a common lounge
on the upper floor of Lillooet, with a separate bathroom opening off the main room. The radio set was placed on a desk just under
windows looking out to the south, in the same room as a bed, writing desk and
couch. On the interior side of the
bathroom door, someone had posted a poem by Dave Taylor (guide 1978-1979)
called ‘The Gift’, and Psalm 150, both handwritten:
The
Gift
by Dave Taylor
(1978)
Reflections
broken by a soft wind,
as I try and
understand;
Mountains and
the lake before me,
offered as a
gift to Man.
Heather meadows
flecked with color,
ice blue sky and
sky blue ice.
Silver water on
a boulder,
peaks which
mirror the evening light.
No shame I’d
feel if I deserved them,
bought them,
owned them, paid the price.
But Creation is
not mine to purchase,
no more than the
grace of Christ.
Psalm
150
(RSV)
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in
his sanctuary;
praise him in
his mighty firmament!
Praise him for
his mighty deeds;
praise him
according to his exceeding greatness!
Praise him with
trumpet sound;
praise him with
lute and harp!
Praise him with
sounding cymbals;
praise him with
loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything
that breathes praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord!
Being on radio
duty promised some personal time and solitude away from the intense and
constant community life and work at Base Camp.
I loved being part of the community at Base Camp, but as an introvert, I
occasionally needed some respite from it all.
Radio duty also meant a boat trip down the inlet, hot meals from the
Malibu kitchen, and time to read my bible and books, write in my journal, and
pray for the trips.
One guide on each
of the trips going into the mountains is assigned a hand-held radio. The primary and most routine task of the
person on radio duty is to talk at least once by radio to each of the three to
six trips out in the mountains that week.
This involves finding out how the guides and campers on each trip are
doing, writing down their prayer requests, and then radioing them all down to
Base Camp for prayer by the whole community.
But the
secondary and perhaps more important task of the person manning the radio room is
to maintain a kind of vigil or watch for 24 hours over the collective safety
and well-being of the guides and campers out in the mountains. That is why the person on radio duty is
charged with staying inside the radio room at all times (with rare exceptions),
as the timing of incoming calls is unpredictable. And this is why the radio is placed in the
same room as the bed - so that the person on radio duty can be woken up if an
emergency call were to come in from one of the trips during the night - or even
in the very dead of night, at perhaps 2:00 or 3:00 am. If such an emergency call were to come in,
the radio person can summon the camp doctor at Malibu, and/or contact Base Camp
for advice - or in the worst cases, to start organizing a rescue party.
I always saw
being on radio duty as a kind of night watch or vigil as might be maintained at
a monastery or guard post. As the guides
called in each evening after dinner, I could envision them all at each specific
location on the routes, having been there myself. I could imagine the two or three guides on
each trip, in their jackets and wool hats standing huddled around the radio in
the cool evening air on some high lonely ridge; above them the alpenglow lingering
on the snow-covered peaks all around with the first stars coming out in the
deep indigo-blue sky above.
This sense of
alert, watchful, and prayerful solitude is one of the reasons I have always
loved Psalm 134:
Psalm
134
(NIV)
Praise the Lord,
all you servants of the Lord
who minister by
night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your
hands in the sanctuary
and praise the
Lord.
May the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth,
bless you from
Zion.
My NIV Study
Bible has these notes re: Psalm 134:
“Psalm 134 A liturgy of praise – a brief
exchange between the worshippers, as they are about to leave the temple after
the evening service, and the Levites, who kept the temple watch through the
night. In the Psalter it concludes the
‘songs of ascent’ …
134:1-2
The departing worshippers call on the Levites to continue the praise of the
Lord through the night (see 1Ch 9:33*).
134:3
One of the Levites responds with a benediction on the worshippers …”
[*1 Chronicles
9:33 (RSV): “Now these are the singers,
the heads of fathers’ houses of the Levites, dwelling in the chambers of the
temple free from other service, for they were on duty day and night.”]
In addition, one
of the evening prayers in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (BOCP) evokes
this same sense of maintaining the night watch:
A
Collect for Aid against Perils (BOCP 1928)
“Lighten our
darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all
perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour,
Jesus Christ. Amen.”
Not long after
being a guide, I wrote the following about being on radio duty:
Thoughts
at Beyond; the Radio Room at Night
by Jerry
Erickson (1982)
At night, a
summer’s evening.
Distances grow
farther with the black.
Mountains rise
beyond sight all around.
The water still
pale with sunset.
Friends in
distant high places prepare for the night.
The radio
crackles with static from the uneasy atmosphere,
as the earth
turns from the sun
and faces the
vast blackness, the open awful universe
and bright
colored, confusing dreams
containing
meaning, just out of touch.
False assurances
with hot tea, the glowing red numbers
of a digital
clock.
Words of a
journal and just delivered mail
under a circle
of light in the darkened room.
And unbidden,
the true assurance – of Him,
deeper than and
transcending the lonely,
wistful mystery
of the summer night.
