I will not fail.

I will not fail.

I cling to that phrase, that monosyllabic mantra, at 12,000 feet, where the sign reads Timberline. I am above Glen Cove but still below something called the Devil’s Playground, and up here where the boulders are red like Mars and even the brown grass can’t catch enough of a breath to grow, I’m flailing. I’m doing everything you’re not supposed to do when you climb hills on a bike: swaying back and forth like a heavy mast, straining to maintain a cadence in the upper 40s, feeling my heart jackhammer in my ears, all while going a mere 3 miles per hour. Over my left shoulder, down below and foreshortened the way only enormous mountains can foreshorten things, are switchbacks piled on top of each other like the coils of a snake. Ahead of me, a man stopped on the shoulder rests his head on his handlebar, his body heaving. Just beyond him, where pewter storm clouds smudge the sky, the road turns and becomes steeper.