The Mountain Between Us

“I turned [the recorder] in my hand. ‘I’m seldom without it.’

‘Like an albatross?’

I laughed. ‘Something like that.’”

When Ashley asks Ben about his recorder—which he hangs around his neck—she jokingly compares it to “an albatross.” This comparison is an allusion to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In the poem, an albatross guides a ship out of difficult weather, but then the mariner shoots the bird, leading to further misfortune. As punishment, the crew forces him to wear the albatross around his neck in penitence for his actions. Although Ashley doesn’t know Ben’s past when she makes this joke—instead referring to his need to wear it for his job—the allusion conveys the recorder’s importance to Ben. After his wife’s death, he has struggled to deal with his loss and guilt. He continues to use the recorder and speak to her, largely as a result of this grief, and thus the recorder serves as his own penitence for his past.

“I use [my hiking bag] as a suitcase because it works, but its main function is best served hiking and it fits me like a glove. It was stuffed with all my overnight and cold-weather hiking gear for my climbs in the Collegiate Peaks. Sleeping bags, Therm-a-Rest pad, Jetboil stove—maybe the most underappreciated and most valuable piece of equipment I own.”

Ben’s description of his hiking bag foreshadows how invaluable it will be to their survival in the wilderness. The equipment he carries with him for hiking becomes vital to his and Ashley’s survival. In many ways, his bag serves as a plot device to increase the verisimilitude of their survival. It provides a reason for why they have this gear and carries the tools that enable their survival and make it more believable.

“We’ve been married a long time, seen a lot, experienced much, but loving somebody gets better the more you do it. You might think an old man like me doesn’t get fired up when she walks across the bedroom in a faded flannel gown, but I do. And she does for me, too.”

Although he’s only briefly in the novel, Grover serves an important role with regard to the theme of The Healing Power of Love. As he explains his marriage to Ashley—and the love he still has for his wife after several decades—it starts her journey of change in the novel. Thanks to Grover, she begins to think that true love is possible, questioning her decision to settle in her marriage to Vince.

“All of us spend our days looking through lenses that are smudged, fogged up, scratched, and some broken. But this here […] this pulls you out from behind the lenses and for a few brief seconds gives you 20/20 vision.”

Grover uses a metaphor to describe how flying in the wilderness makes him feel, describing it as a way to briefly clear the “lenses” with which people experience the world and instead see the reality of it. These words encapsulate the journey that Ben and Ashley go on. Since their “lenses” are “smudged” and “broken”—because of their past experiences—their time in the wilderness allows them to see the reality of the world as they discover their love for each other and realize what has been missing from their lives.

“I took four or five deep breaths and felt her hand slide onto my foot. I looked up and saw that one eye was partly open. She patted my foot and mumbled, ‘Pull…hard.’ I pulled, pushed with my leg, and arched my back. […] The pain shot through her, her head rocked back, and she uttered a muffled scream.”

After Ashley is unconscious for much of Ben’s first few hours in the wilderness, she uses her first moment of consciousness to encourage Ben to set her leg and fix her injury. This moment introduces Ashley’s strength. While Ben struggles to find the courage to cause her pain—taking “four or five deep breaths”—she doesn’t stop him, instead recognizing the importance of what he’s doing and encouraging him to do it despite the extreme pain it causes her.

“You entered the picture and lit my world with laughter and light and wonder. Welcome and warm. You ran by me, a dart of the eyes, a quick glance, flicking sweat off your fingertips, and I wanted to take a shower, wash off Dad, and bathe in you.”

Ben’s description of the first time he saw Rachel emphasizes the healing power of love. During his entire childhood, Ben’s father emotionally abused him, forcing him to run and receiving no love in return for his success. He uses a metaphor to describe Rachel as a “light” in his life, providing him with guidance, support, and hope that love could exist in the world for him despite what he had been through.

“We hadn’t talked yet about our predicament. The being-stuck part. One of the things I’ve learned both in medicine and climbing mountains is that you attack one crisis at a time. The next was her face and head.”

Ben’s words convey the importance that his career as a doctor has in his ability to survive in the wilderness. He takes on tasks one at a time, addressing them in small pieces instead of trying to tackle the larger, overwhelming picture. He uses this strategy throughout the novel, such as when he repeatedly travels only a few miles or focuses solely on food or another task. This technique emphasizes the clinical nature of Ben’s thinking. He doesn’t allow emotion or fear to cloud his judgment, instead doing what he can to address the pieces of their problem one by one.

“Somewhere in there it struck me that Ashley Knox was one of the stronger human beings I’d ever met. Here she lay, half dead, probably in more pain than most people have felt in their entire lives, in the process of missing her own wedding, not to mention the fact that we had no probable chance of rescue. […] Most people would be panicked, despondent, illogical at this point, but somehow she could laugh. What’s more, she made me laugh.”

Ben’s thoughts about Ashley emphasize the important role that humor plays in her character. Despite everything she experiences, she remains positive and makes jokes about their situation. While Ben does much of the physical work involved in their survival, he understands the important role that Ashley plays in keeping their spirits up and admires her refusal to let pain and desperation overwhelm her.

“I brushed away the snow, slid my hand into his jeans pocket, and fingered out the brass Zippo light. […] ‘Thank you, Grover.’ I turned it in my hand. Years in his pocket had scratched and worn it smooth. I held it up and on one side I saw an engraving. It read: A Lamp Unto My Path.”

The lighter that Ben finds in Grover’s pocket symbolizes hope in their dire situation. It represents a physical source of comfort because it provides them with fire for warmth and food. It also symbolizes hope through its inscription: “A Lamp Unto My Path.” The light that it represents is thus a source of guidance for Ben, giving him both comfort and hope despite the hardships of their situation.

“What we called LSD. Long-slow-distance. Where time didn’t matter. No stopwatch. No measurement of our success or failure.”

Ben’s memories of running with Rachel emphasize the importance of the motif of running in the text. Their runs together convey the theme of the healing power of love. In stark contrast to what running was for his father—a competition by which he measured Ben’s value—running for Ben and Rachel was a source of bonding, comfort, and love, enabling Ben to heal from the trauma he experienced at the hands of his father.

“I gave you [the recorder] so I can be with you even when I’m not. Because I miss the sound of your voice when you’re away. And…I want you to miss mine. Miss me.”

Ben remembers what Rachel told him when she gave him the recorder, explaining that it would serve as a connection between them. These words highlight two important symbolic elements of the recorder. First, they show what it means to Ben, as it connects to his love for Rachel. Second, it provides insight into the guilt that Ben feels over Rachel’s death. She implored him to continue to communicate with her—even while they were apart—because she wanted him to “miss” her; now, years later, he still struggles with this idea, recording her messages and struggling to move on from his love for her.

“All of my life, I’d struggle din the waves, tossed, turned, thrown about like a rag doll, forever trying to surface, screaming for air, but somewhere some unseen hand held me beneath the foam and froth. But in that moment, you held back the waves, lifted me above the surface, and filled me.”

Ben uses a metaphor to explain how he felt in his life. He compares his life to being stuck in the ocean, struggling to survive as he’s cut off from the oxygen above and held down by some “unseen” force. However, when Rachel entered his life, she pulled him “above the surface,” giving him a chance for survival for the first time. This metaphor emphasizes the theme of the healing power of love, as Rachel’s love played an important role in saving Ben from his difficult life.

“‘I don’t know how you managed what you did last night. It’s a deep-down kind of strength’—I looked away—‘I’ve only seen one other time.’”

Ben’s words foreshadow Rachel’s strength, which is a revelation that the text explains only near the novel’s end: She sacrificed herself for the hope of her children surviving, just as Ashley sacrificed her body to help Ben kill the mountain lion. Additionally, these words convey Ben’s growing feelings for Ashley. He connects her selflessness and bravery with Rachel’s, conveying the respect and love that he feels for both women.

“Once a heart breaks…it doesn’t just grow back. It’s not a lizard’s tail. It’s more like a huge stained glass that shattered into a million pieces, and it’s not going back together. Least not the way it was.”

In one of Ben’s most hopeless moments, he speaks to Grover after burying his body, metaphorically comparing his heart to “stained glass” because he believes that it’s too broken to be repaired. This metaphor alludes to the heartbreak that Ben still suffers from, years after losing Rachel. However, despite his insistence at this point in the novel that his heart’s “not going back together,” he’ll begin to heal thanks to Ashley’s love.

“Although I did leave both our laptops, cell phones, and all paperwork related to either her or my work. Figured that was all dead weight.”

Ben’s decision to leave everything behind related to their personal lives is a practical decision to reduce the weight of the sled but also a symbolic gesture that conveys their situation in the wilderness. As a work of survival romance, the novel strips away everything from their outside lives, leaving them with only each other to depend on. Through their closeness and the connection they form to survive, their love for each other grows, helping them set aside the less important parts of their lives, as Ben does when he leaves their belongings at the crash site.

“I strapped the sled higher on the harness, buckled myself in, and put one foot in front of the other. I readjusted the straps, then did it again. And again. I didn’t stop until I could go no further. I remember knee-deep snow, stumbling a thousand times, crawling on my elbows, pulling at tree trunks with my blistered and frozen hands, and the quagmire of more snow that I’d ever hoped to see.”

This vivid description and imagery of Ben’s journey to find a new camp thematically emphasizes The Resilience of the Human Spirit. Although he struggles greatly from the cold, exhaustion, and his injury, he continues—putting “one foot in front of the other”—and fights through the difficulties to maximize his and Ashley’s chances of survival.

“We’ve all seen movies where two strangers are lost in some vast wilderness. And then just like An Officer and a Gentleman, they end up rolling on the beach. Mad, passionate love that solves all their problems. Movie ends, and they walk off into the sunset. Weak-kneed and googly-eyed.”

Ben refers to the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman, which tells the story of Zack, a young man who has a difficult home life and joins the Navy. After all his trials and tribulations, he becomes an officer, reuniting with his love, Paula; they embrace, to the applause of her coworkers. Ben’s words emphasize the hollowness that Ben sees in such films. They convey the idea that love fixes everything, allowing people to live in happiness despite everything they’ve been through. This applies to Ben and Ashley’s situation because he refuses to give in to his sexual attraction to her. Although it disappoints her, he recognizes that physical passion isn’t enough. He still struggles to secure their survival and process his feelings about his past with Rachel, and a physical relationship with Ashley can’t help with either.

“I’ll not sleep the rest of my life looking at their faces on the backs of my eyelids. Wondering what if I let you ‘take’ then, when in reality you were wrong and they’d have made it and if it weren’t for you and your dire predictions, they’d be right here.”

Rachel’s explanation for moving forward with her pregnancy emphasizes the theme of hope as a driving force in humanity. Because of the small chance of her children’s survival, she refused to give up hope. Her words—“faces on the backs of my eyelids”—also reference something that Ben says to Ashley in the novel. He explains that he won’t leave her behind to seek help because he “will not live the rest of [his] life staring at [her] face every time [he] close[s] [his] eyes” (202). These parallel words compare the two situations. Just as hope drove Rachel to continue her pregnancy, the hope of both Ben and Ashley surviving drives him to continue to try to get them both to safety instead of just saving himself.

“I unbuckled my pack, pulled the hatchet from my belt, and crawled to the tree. With several good swings I cut a band, maybe two feet long, three inches wide, and an inch or two deep, into and around the base. Come summer, when the heat rose, drawing the sap up, it would ooze and trickle out the scar like tears. Chances are, it would do that for several years.”

After Ben watches the mother moose stand over her calf for hours, he grieves for her loss and mourning. He symbolically cuts a “scar” into the tree, marking it as a symbol of loss and envisioning the tree grieving for years to come. The simile compares the “ooze” of the sap to “tears” and the mark to a “scar,” conveying how he still feels about losing Rachel, as this is also a scar that he struggles to heal.

“She lay still, unmoving. Her bottom lip was shaking. I’d kill her trying to set the leg in place, and even then there was no guarantee. She’d lost blood, but not much. The bone had come out the top outside of her thigh.”

This vivid description of Ashley’s new injury conveys their dire situation while also emphasizing Ashley’s strength. Despite her rebroken leg, she manages to pull Ben from the snow, expending the little energy she has left to save him. This moment thematically emphasizes the resilience of the human spirit. Ashley endures extreme pain and injury to give them one last chance at survival.

“Rachel. Standing alone in the road. Running shoes on. Sweat on her top lip. Trickling down her arms. Hands on her hips. She motioned me forward and whispered. […] I looked down, tried to move, but the snow had frozen around my feet and clung to me. I was stuck. She ran, held out her hand, and whispered, ‘Run with me?’”

After Ben collapses from exhaustion while running for help, he sees Rachel standing before him, beckoning him to find the strength to continue to run. This image emphasizes Rachel’s continuing impact on his life. However, this time, she’s trying to help him save Ashley. This moment symbolizes the bridge that connects Rachel to Ashley. While Ben must still endure losing Rachel and still loves her, he envisions her inviting him to move forward, helping him continue on despite the trauma of losing her.

“[Ashley] pushed back the sheet, reached for me. She held my hand. How do you explain to other people what we’d been through? How do you articulate that? We’d just walked through hell, a hell that had frozen over, and survived. Together. I didn’t have the words. Neither did she.”

As Ashley and Ben hold hands in the hospital after their rescue from the wilderness, the text again emphasizes the deep emotional connection that they’ve formed. Instead of their relationship being predicated on physical attraction or sex, it’s built on the bond they formed in their struggle to survive. In this way, this work of survival romance explores the deep bond that humans form in extreme circumstances—a love that is deeper than just physical attraction.

“I opened a box and set it next to her. In it were his watch, his wallet, his pipe…and the lighter she’d given him.”

The symbolic return of Grover’s items to his wife emphasizes his important role in Ben and Ashley’s survival. While one could argue that he caused them to become stranded in the wilderness—due to him not filing a flight plan with the FAA and his heart condition—it’s clear that Ben and Ashley don’t blame him for what happened. Instead, Ben visits Grover’s wife, talking to her for several hours and giving her closure for her loss.