By: Dee Artea

I fell in love with a physicist. At first, I thought that maybe this was all a mistake. But, believe it or not, he really did charm me, with all he knew about the physical world. About how things move on the earth. And in the sky: such as the sun, moon, planets and stars – and other things up there.

You know how starry-eyed it can be on a warm summer evening. Just the two of us, alone in a darkest part of the park, with the stars twinkling overhead. And maybe a full moon. Pointing out and naming stars and constellations. Okay, I’m a sucker for dreamy settings. Even though we’re in our forties, we can still succumb to the trappings of old-fashioned romance. Actually, I think there is a slight age difference between us, but I ignore it. I’m 48, but look a lot younger; partly because I keep in shape. And I believe he’s 42 or so, but will not tell me his age. I think it bothers him that I’m the older one. He’s kind of behind-the-times that way. One thing we have in common: we both don’t identify with any ethnic group. We just call ourselves white Caucasian. “We’re the Wonder Bread of people,” we say. Yes, I fell in love. Physicist or not.

In the daytime, he talked about things here on earth. Especially how they fall down. “The law of falling bodies,” he called it. He was obsessed with this. I’m not talking about, say, a statue tipping over. But rather, say a rock dropped from the top of a tower, and falling straight down. People usually think that the higher the tower, the faster the rock falls, he told me. Yes, I said, isn’t that true? In fact, I remembered as a young kid talking about what would happen if you dropped a penny from the top of the Empire State Building (which was the tallest building in the world at that time).

I know this sounds like things boys talk about, and if you think so too – well, you’re right. In fact, I was called a tomboy by the mothers in the neighbourhood. And I guess I was; always talking with and playing games with the boys more than doing girl stuff with dolls and such. The tomboy thing didn’t bother my mother, who apparently was one too when she was a child. She even gave me the nickname, Buddy, which has a tomboyish sound, don’t ya think? But my mother did worry about what she called my dare-devil behavior. Testing my limits by jumping out of trees. “One day you are going to really hurt yourself,” she said. “Not just a sprained ankle.” Of course, all this was during my pre-teen years. After that, boys were not interested in me – they wanted girly girls.

Yet, the tomboy thing came in handy within my teenage years when I was looking for a career – or really some kind of job that fit my disposition. I found that being a nurse’s aide was perfect. Well really what they call here a Health Care Aide (HCA), working in hospitals and nursing homes. I got my degree after about 9-months of study, right after graduating from High School. I learned how to do CPR, take vital signs, and help with bathing and dressing. Importantly, I have the stamina for the physically demanding part of the job. You know, the tomboy in me. Plus, I’m a compassionate person, with an outgoing personality – if I may boast a bit. Even my nickname sounds friendly. Hi, I’m your Buddy.

Actually, that’s how I met the physicist. I happened to be working in a hospital ER when he came in with a deep wound in his arm. He cut himself badly while doing something that he wouldn’t tell me about. Although I’m no doctor, and I know my boundaries, I also knew that patients with arm wounds were treated as possible cases of self-harm. And so I looked for clues, such as: other scars; a delay in seeking help (based on blood clotting); no blood elsewhere, indicating it wasn’t an accident, and so forth. But none seemed to apply to his case. “Let it be a secret just between us,” I said, asking again how it happened. “Sure,” he said, “so secret that even you don’t know.” I laughed. It was clear to me he had a personality that I found very appealing.

Well, really more than that. Indeed, after I got him bandaged up, I lied: I said that I did house calls and needed to visit him to properly change the dressing. He was surprised, saying something about how good the healthcare system was, and gave me his address. I paid my house call the very next day. He again was surprised, thinking I wouldn’t be coming so soon. While changing the dressing, and looking in each other’s eyes – we kissed. “Now will you tell me the secret about how you hurt yourself?” I said. “No,” he said. “But I’d like to kiss you again.”

Anyway, back to the penny falling from the Empire State Building, with me and the neighbourhood boys. Well, we fanaticized that the penny, hitting someone below on the top of the head, would be going so fast that – just like a bullet – it would go right through the skull and into the person’s brain. That’s what me and the boys thought, I told the physicist.

Well, he laughed like I never saw anyone laugh before. I had to grab him and hold him tightly in my arms to get him to relax and stop choking on his spittle.  “A penny in your thoughts,” he said, “rather than a penny for your thoughts,” and he started laughing again. “Well, now that’s funny,” I said.

It was times like this, I believe, which more and more endeared me towards him – and also him to me. This, in addition to those moonlit moments.

“So, what does happen,” I asked him, “to that penny dropped from the Empire State Building?” Step by step he explained. First, a falling object will go faster and faster (accelerate, is the technical term, he told me) only if it’s falling in a vacuum. But in the real world of air, water, or any medium, the falling body only accelerates for a very short time, before the medium slows it to a constant speed, and it falls at that speed all the way to the bottom. He said that this speed is called the terminal speed, and it’s a function of the density of the medium and the shape of the falling body. And that’s as technical as I can go with this stuff.

In light of my childhood fantasy about the Empire State Building – which I recall that me and my boy-friends talked about endlessly when we were kids – he told me that the penny, because of its shape and lightness, would quickly reach a terminal speed in air after just a few (3-5) seconds of falling, and then fall the rest of the way at about 50 feet/second, the total time of fall being around 25 seconds, since that building is 1250 feet, from roof to ground. A penny hitting someone on the top of the head at that speed would not hurt, before it bounced onto the sidewalk. The person might not even notice it, if they were wearing a hat.

So that’s the sort of thing Doug and I talked about. Oh, I see that just now I mentioned his name. Really Douglas, which he preferred. But because of his obsession with falling things, I decided to call him just Doug and to spell it D-u-g – as when using a shovel to make a hole into which things could fall down. See, we’re back to that again. Plus, I pronounced Dug with a bass sound, as if I’m digging back in my throat for the resonance. He laughed, and liked it. Especially when I teased him, saying: “You know, I really dig you – Dug!”

And so, Dug it was. Although, I alone was permitted to call him that. Incidentally, you may have guessed by now – the tomboy in me was no deterrent for Dug. Plus, he thought that Buddy was a perfect name for me. At intimate moments, he liked to whisper in my ear: “You really are a buddy.”

So, back to falling. But not just things falling in a hole in the ground. Or pennies dropped from a building. He then went to bigger things, you might say. Things falling off cliffs – very high up. Take, for example, the Grand Canyon in Arizona in the USA. We looked it up and found that the highest point was Point Imperial on the North Rim. From there to the Colorado River below is a total drop of 6400 feet. He made a calculation for a 150lb person doing a belly-to-earth fall. He found that a terminal speed of 120mph would be reached in about 15 seconds or less, and the rest of the fall would take about 28 seconds; for a total time of approximately 43 seconds. In short, the time of fall off the Grand Canyon would be around ¾ of a minute. “Not much time to see your whole life flash before you,” he said.

I quizzed him on why was doing this for a 150lb person. He smiled and said, “Well, you see, that’s what I weigh,” and I thought maybe this fun-physics stuff was going too far. But I didn’t say anything at the time, although frankly the way he talked about this, I found to be – what I would call – a bit spooky.  

But I was in love, and he was such a sweet guy – and I was enthralled in all the things he was teaching me. After all, he was a professor of physics at the local college. I had never met a guy like him before. So, I put all my apprehensive queries in the back of my mind.

Until weeks later, when we started talking about us going somewhere on a vacation together – in the late spring when his classes were over. Even before I had a chance to mention some place or places that interested me, he spoke up and brought up the idea of going to the Grand Canyon. For a second I was startled, because it brought back the image of him jumping off the North Rim. But I didn’t say anything, realizing that I was overreacting. Catastrophizing, I believe, is the technical term for this, which a therapist once told me. Thus, I agreed: for, in fact, I had never been there and it was one of those famous places I always wanted to see. Well, there were lots of places I wanted to see since I rarely left Winnipeg, where I grew up and still live.

 It may seem silly to say this, but Grofé’s Grand Canyon Suite is one of my favourite pieces of Classical music, and I always pictured the canyon in my mind when I play the music.

Dug, it turned out, was not a music person, but he was open to my teaching him about things he didn’t know, just as I listened to him teaching me physics. So, I played Grofé’s Suite for him, pointing out imagery in the tone poem: the sun rising; the colours evoked of the Painted Desert; the mule team walking along a trail; the sun setting; and the final thunderstorm that Grofé called simply, Cloudburst. He asked me questions about the musical instruments used in the suite. Fortunately, I knew all this, having seen the work performed by an orchestra and even read carefully the liner notes on my record album. For example, I told him that coconut shells were used to make the sound of the mules clomping along the trail; I pointed out the use of a “thunder sheet” and a wind machine at the Cloudburst. Also, the use of a celesta, when he asked about the lovely sound of that instrument. Really, he was asking about acoustics, which is just another branch of physics. “The physics of sound,” he said. I smiled, realizing that this was another way we were linked together. It was a love-relationship unlike any other I had experienced in my life.  

It was around this time that I had a revelation. Well, maybe that’s too strong of a word; but maybe not. You see, up to this time in our relationship Dug was doing all the calculations and such on his iPhone, using his two thumbs. But one day he wanted to show me something about falling bodies. As he grabbed a piece of paper and a pencil and started drawing a diagram – my jaw dropped, and I flinched. You see, he grabbed the pencil with his left hand. So what? Well, that day at the ER the wound was on his right arm; and one of the tell-tale signs of self-harm is a wound on the non-dominant forearm. I didn’t think at the time in the ER that he may be left-handed. Also, you must realize that all this was a fairly quick romance, and there was no way for me to see that he was left-handed, until this event.

He saw me flinch and queried me. I said I never realized that he was a southpaw, using the baseball terminology, and I went on talking about famous left-handed pitchers, such as Sandy Koufax, and so forth – and by the time I was done, he forgot what started it all.

But I didn’t forget. Over the next few days, I thought deeply about our relationship and the possibility of more self-harm. I even considered ending this romance. But then the care-giver in me kicked in, and I wanted to help him, if he truly was suicidal. Dug needs me, I thought. It’s my mission.

So, I went with him to Arizona. We went first class, from Winnipeg to Phoenix. I asked him how he could afford this with a professor’s salary. He dismissed my query with a sweep of his hand, and indeed in the Phoenix airport he bought me a whole new summer outfit to wear at the canyon. It made me feel more comfortable – perhaps even stylish – among the other tourists at the Grand Canyon. How could I not fall in love with such a generous, kind, and most gentle man?

We landed in Phoenix in the very late afternoon, and were very hungry. At the airport Dug rented a car, and so after shopping and having a long dinner, we drove to the Canyon’s South Rim visitor’s centre, where he had reserved a room for the night. The drive took 3½ hours, and so we arrived after dark. That was fine with us, for we wanted to experience the sunrise at the canyon, like the first movement of Grofé’s Suite.

After an early breakfast, we walked toward the edge of the canyon – just as the sun was rising in the east. I found Grofé’s, Sunrise, on my iPhone. Standing and holding hands, we looked and listened in awe as the sun and the sounds played out their duet with the sun’s rays hitting the canyon walls as the orchestra climaxed.

After a brief kiss, we walked toward the edge of the Canyon. Looking at the gigantic canyon is an experience difficult to describe, without sounding trite and corny. The vastness of the thing both across and down is overwhelming. Dug felt so too, and he gently squeezed my hand as we both took in the immeasurable scene before us.

Just as I was about to emit another sigh from my throat, I spied a mule team clopping along a canyon trail below us. I immediately hummed Grofé’s, On the Trail, out loud. Dug smiled and hummed along with me. We didn’t need my iPhone for this. “We could use some coconut shells now,” said Dug. We both laughed and hugged. (Incidentally, when still in Winnipeg, we had looked into taking one of those mule rides through the canyon, but found that you needed reservations over a year in advance.)

We spent the morning walking along the South Rim, and going down some of the trails that were easy to walk. It wasn’t very crowded, as it would be later with all the summer visitors. So, we often were alone, and we just sat on a rock taking in the vista before us. I believe that Dug was just as blissful with all this, as I was.  

I suppose it will come as no surprise that after a relaxing lunch at the café at the South Rim, Dug wanted to visit Point Imperial on the North Rim. I hesitated for an instant when he mentioned it, but quickly reprimanded myself for being a spoil sport. Since it was early afternoon, we had time to get there before it got dark. The drive took over 4½ hours. Yes, the canyon is that enormous. As fate would have it, while driving from the South to the North Rim, there was a huge thunderstorm. It obviously reminded us of the last movement of Grofé’s Suite. Indeed, a “cloudburst” it was, as if the ghost of the composer was traveling with us.

The majority of tourists at the Grand Canyon are massed at the visitors’ centre on the South Rim. Not surprisingly, when we got to Imperial Point, we were the only ones there. All to ourselves, to experience this vastness from yet another perspective.   

We walked toward the edge and looked down: indeed, it was a very long fall down from this point of the Rim to the Colorado River below. Dug had planned to drop a few stones over the Rim to see how long it took to get the bottom. Recall that he had calculated that it should take around 43 seconds. And I had the job of timing the fall with the stopwatch on my iPhone.

But in looking down from Point Imperial, the drop was not a sheer vertical wall, as expected. Rather, there were many plateaus and other cliffs along the way down to the river. So, dropping stones, or having anything else fall, would not be a test of the law of falling bodies. Dug was disappointed. He threw the stones toward the river below, and immediately turned around and walked away from the cliff – not even watching where they went.

Yes, very disappointed. In fact, I would say that he was a bit depressed the rest of the trip. On the way home he hardly talked and wasn’t hungry. His eyes seemed to be focussed on a point at infinity. But he didn’t push me away. When I touched him affectionately, he responded in kind.

When we got back in Winnipeg, I said that I could ask the therapist I knew if she would see him. With another wave of the hand, he said “absolutely not,” and changed the subject.

The new subject was really the old one: falling bodies. He opened up: telling me this is what he was thinking about on the trip home. You see, he told me that the absolutely greatest purely vertical fall on the entire planet is here in Canada. That was the good news. But it’s nowhere close. It is Mount Thor in Auyuittuq National Park on Baffin Island in Nunavut, north to the Arctic Circle. Mount Thor has a massive vertical drop, almost straight down, of 4101 feet. The “straight down” was important, after the experience with Point Imperial at the Grand Canyon.

Dug did the math for a 150lb person falling from Mount Thor. It would reach a terminal speed of 104 mph in 5 seconds, and then fall at that speed for another 23.5 seconds, for a total time of 28.5 seconds. About half-a-minute from top to bottom. Thus “Thor,” as we simply called it, was now Dug’s obsession. And his obsession became my obsession. Indeed, I too developed that faraway look – peering at infinity. Yes, this was to be our next adventure.

Not surprisingly, getting there took a lot of work and planning. First there was the timing because of weather conditions; that far north (around 66-degree north latitude). Only July and August will work; although even then, there could be freak blizzards. The timing was okay for Dug, since he would finish teaching a summer course in late July; and so, we picked early August for our expedition to Thor. We need permits from Parks Canada just to get into the park. Lots of special gear to wear, and so forth. We spent much of our spare time over the summer planning the trip. Even exercising together, to get into shape for the trek. Hence, by August we were ready to go.

The details of the trip are tiresome to repeat. Suffice to say there were no snags along the way. The outline was this. From Winnipeg we flew to Ottawa, and then took a connecting flight on Canadian North into Iqaluit, capital of Nunavut. From there we took a regional flight to Pangnirtung, the gateway to our goal, Auyuittuq National Park.

One thing, however, I do want to talk about. When we got off the plane in Iqaluit, Dug took a deep breath, looked toward the sky, and said the strangest thing to me. “I feel like I belong here,” he said emphatically. Recall that Dug never talked about his family. I often bugged him about this – in contrast to me, complaining endlessly about my overbearing mother. Now, standing on an airstrip in Iqaluit, he opened up and told me he knew nothing of his birth. His earliest memories are of being in foster care, of which there were several in his early life. There was no abuse; but no real love, either. The families were in it for the monthly money from the government was his conclusion. Thus, at age 18 he moved out and broke contact with all of them. “Now that I think about it,” he said, “you’re all I have.” When he said this to me, there was a pause as we stared into each other’s eyes. Then we hugged tightly, and I could feel tears dripping on my neck.

We spent the night in the hamlet of Pangnirtung in a small hotel, before our ultimate goal the next day – namely, Mount Thor. That night I had a dream about us at Mount Thor. After trekking up to the top, as we approached the edge holding hands, he stopped. He turned to me and got down on one knee. I thought at first that he was going to propose marriage. But instead, he grabbed me by the legs, so that when he lifted me, I bent over his right shoulder. Then he carried me to the edge of the cliff – while I was punching him on the back, and screaming to “put me down.” Well, yes, I did go down – down over the cliff, with Dug. Yes, he jumped off the cliff with me over his shoulder. Both of us together in the half-minute fall from the top of Mount Thor. And, as with all dreams in my life that I have had about falling … I woke up before hitting the ground.

Despite being in a chilly room in the Canadian Arctic, I was sweating upon waking up. Lying there next to Dug snoring away, I couldn’t get that dream out of my mind. I kept repeating it – over and over, as I lay awake – not being able to fall back to sleep.

Pondering the meaning of the dream for me – I made a decision. If Dug wants to jump off Mount Thor, I will go with him. I love him so much that I want to die with him. I don’t want to live without him. I have never loved anyone like this before. And this way, neither one will have to experience the death of the other. We will go together. Yes, I will fall to my death off the deepest precipice in the whole bloody world, in the arms of the love of my life.

Done. And I fell back into a deep sleep.

The next morning, we had breakfast in the hotel’s café: Inuit cuisine of Bannock and meat, or what they call country food (Niqituinnaq). I had the cooked polar bear meat and Dug had the fermented walrus. It was all washed down with what they call Labrador tea; it’s made from the wild tilaqquq plant that grows in the tundra. He finished before me, and immediately went off to get a chartered boat and a local guide to get us to the Auyuittuq National Park.

Alone in our hotel room and looking out at the barren Arctic landscape, I fantasized about our chat during the half-minute fall from the top to the bottom of Thor. How much can we say in the last half-a-minute of our lives? I set my stopwatch to 30-seconds. “Here goes,” I said to myself.

I’m so glad we met, my sweet Dug, despite this early ending. You made me so fulfilled in so many ways. I love everything about you, you crazy jerk.

Me too, Buddy. You’re like no other girl I’ve ever met. I really do dig your tomboyish ways. Too bad I’ve brought us to this. You know you didn’t have to do this. But I guess it’s too late to say that!

Yeah. Don’t waste your breath on things we can’t change now. Truly: the end is near, as those evangelists who tried to convert me always –

Jeez. That’s not much of a –

“We must leave immediately,” Dug shouted, as he came bolting through the door. “The weather is a perfect, 8-degress C, but the forecast is for storms starting tomorrow and continuing the rest of the week.”

Getting our gear together, we met our guide. An Inuit man, probably around age 30 or more. He introduced himself saying, “You may call me either Ujarak or Paul.” “What does Ujarak mean?” I asked. “Rock or stone.”

We got in his boat and he drove out of the Fjord toward the park. I asked him which name he preferred. He said that Paul was fine, but it led to an explanation of the more recent history of Inuit names in Nunavut. Before 1970 everyone just had their Inuit names. But then the government forced them to take on English names too. The Inuit name became the surname. They could pick any English name they wanted. So, when he was born his father named him Paul Ujarak, since there was an Englishman with that name, whom he liked. “What about your brothers and sisters,” I said. “Did he find any other English people he liked?”  “Well, actually the answer is: no, he didn’t. But here the story gets sad.”  Paul went on to explain that shortly after he was born, his mother died from food poisoning from eating undercooked walrus meat. After that, his father never remarried – and so he never had to come up with another English name for a child. All this was no accident according to his father. Because he had no other English person that he respected, fate solved the problem by the death of his wife. “It’s all in the hands of fate or the spirit world,” he said, quoting his father. “Do you believe that?” I said. “It explains why I’m an only child – that’s all I know,” said Paul.

Just then we were approaching the entrance to Auyuittuq National Park. From there we hiked through the Akshayuk Pass and on toward the base of what is called the “backside” of Thor. From there we were on our own to trek to the top and to the edge of the 4101-foot treeless precipice. Paul said we had an hour to get there and back. Otherwise, he would leave us to survive on our own. That’s all the time we had to get safely back to Pangnirtung because of the weather. Of course, I realized all this was irrelevant – if Dug and I are going to die there, anyway. But I didn’t tell Paul that.

As it turned out, this was not a problem. Not because we both jumped off Mount Thor and died. Instead, fate came up with a completely different scenario. As we began our trek up Thor – still within sight of Paul – Dug became deathly sick, vomiting profusely. I tried to hold and help him in some way, but he pushed me away, as he struggled to not vomit all over me. Even with all my nursing work, I’ve never seen a person so sick: it seemed that his entire stomach was coming apart and ending up on the grounds of Akshayuk Park. He started breaking out in hives. Lips swelling. Started wheezing. He was in anaphylactic shock. And then it stopped. He had that faraway look of his – but this time, with a difference. I cradled him in my arms, and even kissed the vomit smelling lips – for the last time. All my Nurse’s Aide knowledge was useless. I took Dug’s pulse. 

Paul could see what was happening and came running. “He’s dead,” I said. “Must’ve been food poisoning,” Paul said. “What did he eat for breakfast?” “Fermented walrus,” I said. “Going so fast, he must have been allergic to the meat

that probably wasn’t fully fermented,” said Paul. “It happens up here more than it should. I’m so sorry.”

Still holding Dug in my arms, I tasted the putrid lips one more time. “Well Dug, I guess I no longer have a mission in life,” I whispered in his ear – with tears falling in his hair.

We carried him back to the boat and Paul drove it back to Pangnirtung. In the hamlet, I immediately made arrangements for Dug to be buried on Baffin Island – the place where, for the very first time in his life, he felt at home. I had a secular service, with no talk of God. Dug, I believe, would’ve approved.

It all happened, appropriately during the massive summer snow storm that came in over the next few days. Dug would have smiled at that too.

I told Paul that it all happened like some cosmic scheme planned by the gods or the spirit world. (I don’t know if I really meant that, but it was the best I could do at the moment.) Paul agreed that, at least, it was an explanation, like that put forth by his father to explain the misfortunes of his life.

 After the storm finally passed, there was another short window of clear weather. The next flight out of Baffin Island was not coming for another day. So, I again hired Paul to take me back to Mount Thor.

As before, he stayed at the base of Thor, and I alone trekked to the top. For some unknown reason, I realized that the day was a Thursday. Well, how appropriate, I thought: Thor’s Day. 

With a constant wind whistling and blowing in different directions, I reached the summit and walked toward the edge. Standing on the edge of Thor, I took in the immense vista before me. A vast, stark, landscape of barren granite towers carved out of glaciers, with a river winding through it. Majestic and almost bizarre.

Sitting down, with my feet dangling over the edge of great Thor, I looked straight down, thinking of the over 4000 feet to the bottom. “I’m here, Dug. And there’s the bottom, somewhere down here.” The precipice is perfect for Dug’s experiment, for it slopes inward, leaving nothing but empty space between me and the ground. Ideally, that is. But this is the Arctic, and although it’s clear up here, today down there is a low-lying fog of clouds common in the valleys. Nonetheless, I picked up a stone, and holding it over the precipice, I said, “I’m dropping this Ujarak for you, Dug.” Between the wind up here and the fog below I could neither hear nor see it hit the ground. “Sorry Dug, no timing of the law of falling bodies today.” 

I arched my back and looked skyward, with my arms spread on either side and my hands clutching the edge of Thor. While peering into the open and clear firmament above, the wind briefly subsided, and I thought I heard Dug’s voice. Was he saying something about the secret of that gash in his arm when we first met? Or was he telling me what to do now, here sitting on the edge of the biggest cliff in the whole world?

Well, I thought: if I don’t do anything – then this is a real cliffhanger. Literally.

My guess was that Dug would enjoy the humour in all this. Yet in the end, the down-to-earth physicist would say: “Go home, Buddy. Go home.”

Just then the wind kicked in: whistling and blowing all around me, resuming its whiplike thrashing of Thor.

###

Dee Artea lives in Winnipeg, Canada. 

For Dee the act of writing ever entails amusement and gratification.