"The Pilgrim's Ladder"

"I will not forget what I have seen. How can I forget such terror? How can I forget such joy? How can I forget such beauty?" Micah is a climber inexorably drawn to the White Mountain and a vision of the summit, whose "dark night of the soul" is recounted in a moving and profound allegory, "The Pilgrim's Ladder" ($9.99 in paperback from CreateSpace).

Author Ryan Montoya is the 23-year-old University of Colorado Boulder student, and Paradise High School graduate, who survived a 1500-foot fall down the face of Pyramid Peak near Aspen, Colorado, dislocating his elbow and fracturing his pelvis. Though newspaper accounts reported what happened, Montoya's novel explores the deeper call of the mountains, why a bold young man would seek to touch the summit.

The words of the Elder of the valley echo throughout the novel. "Beware the long journey," the Elder tells young Micah, desperate to know about the northern mountains, "beware The Divide. Though along it you may find your answer, remember that by pain are its answers revealed."

The chapters in the four sections ("The Valley," "The Divide," "The White Mountain," "The City Of The Gods") are titled with a single word, such as pride, courtship, pain, atonement, most of which begin with an observation about the "seeker."

"The seeker is but a novice to love, for he has spent his life in the wilderness. As a child he was curious, for he had wonder. As a youth he was determined, for he had powerful desire. As a man he feels love, for his passion points to purpose. But the seeker has not yet found his purpose. … Passion and purpose, these are the seeds of love."

For Micah, and his sometime climbing companion Zachary, the mountains are almost living beings. The Twisted Peak, pridefully reaching for heaven, is punished by the gods with a kind of "malicious energy." What hope is there for a mere man to reach the summit?

Yet if the gods will, the man will live. "I will live as a man should," Micah says, "not in the realm of the gods, but in the lands far below. But … I will not forget…."