Rocky Mountain News
January 2009
-Joan Hinkemeyer
When You Journeyed Homeward
By Cynthia Kennedy. Eolus Press
Initially, this appears to be just another mountaineering book about people obsessed with bagging the world's highest peaks. But Kennedy has made it into something more. With brutal honesty, she examines the ego-driven personalities, divisiveness and blatant disregard for the environment and human life among mountain climbers.
Those elements nearly destroy her and her marriage when her husband, Jerry, returns from Kathmandu with hands and feet so badly frostbitten he may lose them. Juggling her own health problems and a full-time job as a lawyer, Kennedy also assumes the role of nurse to her husband, cleaning and bathing Jerry's damaged feet daily and being the target for his anger and irascible demands.
Final word: Kennedy's polished, insightful prose will make her story resonate with other caregivers while also removing the romance of death-defying mountaineering.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
When You Journeyed Homeward
Journey Homeward
Author pens book on mountaineer husband’s travels
By Pam Mellskog
Colorado Hometown News Group 10/15/08
His feet still weep with open wounds 17 years after frostbite crept deep into all 10 of his toes on a face of Mount Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world.
The medical crisis forced Jerry Kennedy down at about 21,000 feet, an elevation heartbreakingly close to the 26,906 peak of this mountain that rises on the Nepal/Tibet border just west of Mount Everest.
Now, Cho Oyu means something beyond its technically intriguing rock-and-snow faces and beautiful Tibetan name, which translates as “Turquoise Goddess.”
But it took writing a book for Cynthia T. Kennedy, Jerry’s wife, to decode the meaning of her husband’s summit attempt and resulting toe amputations — a condition that, due to a stubborn bone infection, still requires daily bandaging, she said.
For this reason, “When You Journeyed Homeward,” her 166-page work self-published this year, might be aptly subtitled, “ Perspectives from a Mountaineer’s Wife.”
In it, the Lafayette attorney and award-winning playwright makes a case for how to wait well when a partner adventures and the mountain becomes a potential third party to the marriage.
“We’ve known a lot of people who lost their marriages over mountain climbing. I think that is because you feel that the person’s dream is in competition with your marriage,” she said.
The toughest times came after the Cho Oyu climb that ended his arduous high-altitude mountaineering days, she said.
“I got asked a lot, ‘Why did you let him do this?’ as if any of us have that kind of control over each other,” Cynthia Kennedy, 55, said. “The analogy is close to people who (have a loved one) gone to war, because whether they’re there by choice or not, you have no control. That’s what you’ve got to get comfortable with.”
To this end, journaling helped, as did subscribing more and more to that hippie phrase, “Go with the flow,” she said.
In the 1980s, during her husband’s most active mountaineering days, that was easier said than done.
When he boarded the airplane, a weeks-long silence ensued.
Today, cell phones bridge the gap between climbers on mountains and family waiting at home.
Such technology allowed New Zealand expedition guide Rob Hall in 1996 to make a radio call to base camp. Climbers there used a satellite telephone to patch him through to his wife in New Zealand to say “goodbye” from near the peak of Mount Everest mere hours before he knew he would die of exposure.
Gary Neptune, owner of Neptune Mountaineering in Boulder, married a German climber he met at a base camp in the Himalayas. Very often, the couple climbed together, which erased the dynamic experienced by one who goes and one who stays, he said.
However, he remembers the communication blackout of yesteryear that likely strained many relationships.
“Back then, you had to communicate by telegram. Even the telephone darn near didn’t work,” he said.
But telegrams wired from Nepal to the United States introduced a whole other margin of error as messages often arrived stateside with the meaning mangled by the language barrier between the sender and the locals, Neptune said.
“They weren’t very good English speakers,” he said of the telegram office clerks in Katmandu.
Talking about adventures and misadventures face-to-face could be just as bewildering, according to Cynthia Kennedy.
Much of her journey in the book revolves around demystifying her husband’s trek up Cho Oyu.
“I learned he did have an Achilles heel,” she said. “Something about his own pride had something to do with his situation. And I had to follow him up that mountain before I truly understood that personality trait.”
Following him up the mountain, in this case, meant allowing him to tell the story in his own time and hoping that the telling would bring healing.
To this end, she waited with him at home after the accident as much as she did when wanderlust took him away before it happened.
Cynthia Kennedy bathed and bandaged his disfigured feet. She weathered his frustration and depression.
Mostly, she learned not take a disappointed man’s pain personally and to develop a richer inner-life, she said.
Learning the lessons of a mountaineer’s wife in the wake of hardship took time.
Cynthia Kennedy spent 10 years intermittently drafting this dialogue-rich book full of familiar Boulder County scenes along with takes of yaks, avalanches and Sherpas from the top-of-the-world.
Ultimately, it also took courage.
She noted that few men want their most humbling moments put on a press.
“But I had to be able to do this, like he had to be able to climb,” she said.
Author pens book on mountaineer husband’s travels
By Pam Mellskog
Colorado Hometown News Group 10/15/08
His feet still weep with open wounds 17 years after frostbite crept deep into all 10 of his toes on a face of Mount Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world.
The medical crisis forced Jerry Kennedy down at about 21,000 feet, an elevation heartbreakingly close to the 26,906 peak of this mountain that rises on the Nepal/Tibet border just west of Mount Everest.
Now, Cho Oyu means something beyond its technically intriguing rock-and-snow faces and beautiful Tibetan name, which translates as “Turquoise Goddess.”
But it took writing a book for Cynthia T. Kennedy, Jerry’s wife, to decode the meaning of her husband’s summit attempt and resulting toe amputations — a condition that, due to a stubborn bone infection, still requires daily bandaging, she said.
For this reason, “When You Journeyed Homeward,” her 166-page work self-published this year, might be aptly subtitled, “ Perspectives from a Mountaineer’s Wife.”
In it, the Lafayette attorney and award-winning playwright makes a case for how to wait well when a partner adventures and the mountain becomes a potential third party to the marriage.
“We’ve known a lot of people who lost their marriages over mountain climbing. I think that is because you feel that the person’s dream is in competition with your marriage,” she said.
The toughest times came after the Cho Oyu climb that ended his arduous high-altitude mountaineering days, she said.
“I got asked a lot, ‘Why did you let him do this?’ as if any of us have that kind of control over each other,” Cynthia Kennedy, 55, said. “The analogy is close to people who (have a loved one) gone to war, because whether they’re there by choice or not, you have no control. That’s what you’ve got to get comfortable with.”
To this end, journaling helped, as did subscribing more and more to that hippie phrase, “Go with the flow,” she said.
In the 1980s, during her husband’s most active mountaineering days, that was easier said than done.
When he boarded the airplane, a weeks-long silence ensued.
Today, cell phones bridge the gap between climbers on mountains and family waiting at home.
Such technology allowed New Zealand expedition guide Rob Hall in 1996 to make a radio call to base camp. Climbers there used a satellite telephone to patch him through to his wife in New Zealand to say “goodbye” from near the peak of Mount Everest mere hours before he knew he would die of exposure.
Gary Neptune, owner of Neptune Mountaineering in Boulder, married a German climber he met at a base camp in the Himalayas. Very often, the couple climbed together, which erased the dynamic experienced by one who goes and one who stays, he said.
However, he remembers the communication blackout of yesteryear that likely strained many relationships.
“Back then, you had to communicate by telegram. Even the telephone darn near didn’t work,” he said.
But telegrams wired from Nepal to the United States introduced a whole other margin of error as messages often arrived stateside with the meaning mangled by the language barrier between the sender and the locals, Neptune said.
“They weren’t very good English speakers,” he said of the telegram office clerks in Katmandu.
Talking about adventures and misadventures face-to-face could be just as bewildering, according to Cynthia Kennedy.
Much of her journey in the book revolves around demystifying her husband’s trek up Cho Oyu.
“I learned he did have an Achilles heel,” she said. “Something about his own pride had something to do with his situation. And I had to follow him up that mountain before I truly understood that personality trait.”
Following him up the mountain, in this case, meant allowing him to tell the story in his own time and hoping that the telling would bring healing.
To this end, she waited with him at home after the accident as much as she did when wanderlust took him away before it happened.
Cynthia Kennedy bathed and bandaged his disfigured feet. She weathered his frustration and depression.
Mostly, she learned not take a disappointed man’s pain personally and to develop a richer inner-life, she said.
Learning the lessons of a mountaineer’s wife in the wake of hardship took time.
Cynthia Kennedy spent 10 years intermittently drafting this dialogue-rich book full of familiar Boulder County scenes along with takes of yaks, avalanches and Sherpas from the top-of-the-world.
Ultimately, it also took courage.
She noted that few men want their most humbling moments put on a press.
“But I had to be able to do this, like he had to be able to climb,” she said.
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