In Death, Lyman’s Words Take On New Meanings

When the news flashed across the AP wire April 20 about Sandpoint artist Stephen Lyman’s death, the words he spoke a month earlier took on a new, heavy freight.

On March 22, we had met at his home north of Sandpoint for an interview for the above story, which originally ran April 14. His voice was full of life as he talked about his decision years ago to give up technical climbing (the kind with ropes and hardware), partly for safety reasons and partly because he liked hiking solo with no necessity for a belaying partner.

“And also, as much as I love climbing, you’re going real slow and not seeing much territory,” he said. “OK, you might have a great view and that’s great. But I more enjoy mountaineering, backpacking off trails and scrambling over mountains.

“I get to see a lot more, and I get to climb, too,” he continued. “Because I’ll get to a mountain and drop my pack and climb to the top of the mountain, obviously by routes that aren’t terribly difficult or exposed.”

Those words, so sensible-sounding at the time, have taken on an oddly ominous ring. Even more ominous are some of the words in his coffee-table art book, “Into the Wilderness: An Artist’s Journey,” which was released in October.

In that book, Mark Mardon, who wrote the text that accompanies Lyman’s art, describes one of Lyman’s backcountry trips:

“The ridge Steve has chosen to climb looks formidable and otherworldly… . (Steve) wonders if he isn’t setting himself too ambitious a goal. But the doubt is fleeting. Never one to be easily deterred he has tested himself against mountaineering hardships countless times, always rising to the challenge of getting around or over tough obstacles.”

In another passage, Mardon writes of Lyman’s most frightening mountain experience, a youthful mistake he made on a snowfield many years ago, snow-blinded and exhausted, without crampons or ice ax:

“Suddenly he slipped, and he was on his side shooting down the icy slope. For 100 yards, he was in ‘free-slide.’ Everything was a blur. He couldn’t see if he was nearing the rocky ledge that he knew was below, but he wasn’t waiting to find out. He flipped on his stomach and dug his fingers into the snow. Finally he slowed and stopped, about 100 feet from the ridge. Very tensely, digging little toe- and heel-holds in the snowpack, Steve worked his way off the slope. Passing by Red Peak now, he can’t help but smile at the memory of its nearly doing him in.”

Every mountaineer has similar tales of peril - if not, they haven’t been in the mountains enough. Tales like these don’t imply risk-taking; they imply a respect for the mountains and for the teller’s human limits. Only later, with the skewed perspective of grief, do these stories sound like cautionary tales.

A week ago, Lyman’s body was found at the bottom of a deep ravine in the wilderness. Nobody knows exactly what happened. Did he slip on some of the fresh snow that had fallen that day, similar to that long ago incident? Slip on some rocks? Whatever the reason, he died in a fall, alone in rugged terrain.

However, as I sit here and listen to Lyman’s voice, full of life, preserved on my mini-recorder, I hear words from that interview that are oddly comforting, or at least words that help put his life and death into perspective.

Here, he talks about discovering his favorite place in the world:

“When I was about halfway through college, I was totally burned out. I couldn’t even make myself do my assignments. And I thought, well, this is strange (laughs), this never happened to me before. I’d better take a break. And I decided to take a week off school and go backpacking in this incredible place that I had seen photographs of - Ansel Adams, David Muench, the landscape photographers of the ‘70s. So I did. … And I’ve been going there ever since. I’ve made about 40 trips there, to date.”

The place was Yosemite National Park, and it was there, on his 41st trip, that he fell to his death in a rugged canyon.

At 38, he was too young to die. His young family will miss him terribly, and the thousands of fans of his art will mourn him.

Yet if he had to die, at least there’s this: He died in the one place on earth he loved the most.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo