THE SEDONA COVENANT

Part I
Our Mother’s Keepers

Chapter One

‘J Micah Maroh is dead.  Big hairy-assed deal!’

“How’s that for an obituary?” Micah said outloud as he contemplated his present predicament.

“Big hairy-assed drop, big hairy-assed splat,” he continued, leaning out just a little so he could see approximately where his body would hit.

“Two hundred feet, straight down.  Should do it.”

He leaned back against the hard granite cliff-face, careful not to apply too much pressure.  It was a delicate and desperate balancing act maintaining his position on the five-inch ledge that played out two feet on either side of him.  Any undo tension that forced his butt forward the slightest bit and his obituary would indeed become a reality.

And though there would certainly not be any profane language in it, Robyn, his lovely wife of twenty years, and the ethics of the Sedona Chronicle editorial staff would see to that, an obituary is an obituary.

“Dead is dead!” Micah mused.

He relaxed slightly and placed his right hand on the ledge to relieve some of the strain on his back.  He gazed out at what he considered one of the most beautiful views in the world, the absolutely breathtaking raw beauty of the redrock cliffs and mountains of Sedona, Arizona.

“Lot’s worse places to buy the farm, I suppose.” he muttered.  “Lot’s worse.”

He took a deep breath, slowly let it out and shook his head.

‘Death isn’t necessarily a bad thing,’ he thought.  ‘Hell, I’ve been courting it in one form or another most of my life.’

“It’s the damn embarrassment of it all.  Here we have a double-tough, died-in-the-wool, no-rope, outlaw free-solo cliff-scaler and rock-climber, and he’s either going to have to be rescued like an inexperienced tourist, or his broken, battered, and bruised body will be found at the foot of this cliff.”

‘Some choice,’ he thought.

Micah carefully turned his head to the right and slightly upward.

“Not a chance in hell,” he whispered, shaking his head.

The large slab that had broken off above his head left a smooth fifty-foot high section angled out 15 to 20 degrees.

“I’m not a damn rock bug!”

Below, the large sheared away section had sufficiently destroyed enough of the hand and footholds that got him to where he was, that it would be sure suicide to make any attempt at trying to retrace his steps.

It was twenty feet to the first protrusion that could be classified as anything resembling a foothold.  And the momentum to get there, created by the weight of his body sliding down to it, would propel him right on by and into the jagged rocks two hundred feet below.  There he would join his Australian bush hat and small daypack that contained his cell phone and water bottle.

Micah knew he was screwed.  He had pressed the edge of the envelope a tad too far.

He had been in similar situations in his climbing career, but none he couldn’t get out of by himself, eventually.  Once, he’d been stuck on a mountainside in Montana for three days and two nights before taking a calculated risk that left him laying in some small rocks and bushes thirty feet beneath the rock protrusion where he was stranded.

In Canada, he and Robyn were climbing a 10,000-foot mountain near the Chateau Lake Louise resort, and he took a 150-foot tumble at the 9,000-foot level.

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