The Liberty of Silence

The plaque was Keith’s idea. He wanted something that spoke for itself, something permanent. It was his way to memorialize our four closest friends who had died on an expedition in the Arctic that summer. He came up with the epitaph below the names of the dead: Adventurers with Courage, Competence, and Comedy.

In their honor, Keith and I climbed the Medicine Bow Diamond, a seven-hundred-foot wall, at night. I led and Keith carried the heavy bronze plaque in his pack. The rock on the Diamond is knife-sharp quartzite and I remember we shredded one of the ropes during the ascent. We summited at dawn. The welkin above and Lake Marie far below were lavender. Tim Banks, another of the few remaining members of the Wyoming Alpine Club, was there to help mount the plaque on the mountain.

While Keith and I had climbed up the face through the night, Tim, a gnome-like, thick-mustached man soon to become police chief, had been sitting on