Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ary. In a tiny hand, in spidery blue ink, Lachenal had covered every square inch of pa-
per with his meticulous jottings.
I turned to June 3 and read the passage I already knew by heart. As I did so, my
mind drifted back to my old fantasy that Don Jensen and I were Terray and Lachenal.
I had long since given up that daydream. By now, I knew much more about Lachenal
than I had at age twenty. He was no longer the simple romantic embodiment of grace,
speed, impetuous drive. He had grown in my consciousness to become a rounded char-
acter, flawed by his shortcomings—his contempt for those who disagreed with him,
his ingratitude to some who went out of their way to be helpful. There was little, in
Lachenal's writings, of the deep emotional loyalty to Terray that Terray expressed for
him on page after page of
Conquistadors.
Yet for all that, as I stared at the cramped blue paragraphs in that spidery hand, I
admired Lachenal as much as ever—for his candor and honesty, for his intolerance of
pretension, and ultimately, for his lucidity in extremis.
Hero worship, I reflected, was appropriate for twenty-year-olds. Respect and admir-
ation were harder-won. Lachenal had been dead for almost forty-two years that day
in May when I held his handwritten testament in my hands. For forty-two years, his
truth had been lost in the shadow of Herzog's blazing myth. It deserved the chance to
emerge once more into the light.
