– A poetic tribute by Ron Dart, author and member of the Chilliwack Outdoor Club –

–

Delores Lachapelle (d. January 22, 2007)

Edward Lachapelle (d. February 2, 2007)


“In my beginning is my end” -T.S. Eliot East Coker


I was young in those days,

keen to learn mountain lore, to take to glaciers and snow packed slopes,

could ski better than walk, left school before finishing,

against my elder’s advice, to live the

mountain life, to be far from the madding crowd.

 

There were, of course, dangers on peaks,

places to be alert and alive to when off piste,

when in

deep powder.

 

It was Edward who pioneered avalanche safety in those

unsure, untried years, Switzerland where I once lived in

Murren, then Alta Utah our

north star, The ABCs of Avalanche Safety (1961) our

primer and sacred text on the subject.

 

Alpine touring in those years was still in its infancy, and

it was Edward again that did much of the early work on

transceivers, when most of us used antiquated means to find a

buried friend.

 

It was in the late 1960s, I was never a day not

on skis, traversing the white slopes like an alpine gipsy, high

ridges and peaks my meccas and new Jerusalem. Is there

more to mountain culture than skill finesse and the adrenaline rush of a

challenging and steep descent between rocks on all sides,

feather powder our holy grail and daily sacrament?

 

And life with the mountain Sami in Northen Norway, reindeer and

Northern lights, dramatic and mesmerizing, long dark nights in frigid

snow, sitting with them, held by them, Arne Naess birthing deep ecology

inin those early 70s.

 

Dolores, you walked me yet deeper and further, taught me

much of the real reasons for the mountain vocation and soul sanity.

Your many books were tender, probing, informed, D.H.

Lawrence and Martin Heidegger, deep ecology and mountain

soul knit affectionately with inviting powder, Tai Chi spirituality,

the new society and way of being ever before you, dasein and

gelassenheit compass.

 

It was all about future primitive, wisdom of the earth and a return

to the sanctuary of the mountains, throne room of the gods.

 

You parted with Ed for reasons oft stated, some obvious, others deeper,

unconscious, subconscious, years of tension and opposition wearing the

soul thin.

a sadness I felt, thought there was more, naïve romanticism not the answer,

deeper understandings revealed, unconcealed as I heard, learned more.

 

Mountain mentors that remain together rare but mountains solid—what the difference?

 

You took different trails, took to different peaks, far, far from

one another—Edward to a one room cabin in Alaska,

Dolores in Silverton.

 

You left us Dolores in January 2007. It was kind of you Edward to make

the long journey south to attend the funeral, to bid adieu to Dolores.

Did you realize how the trip would end?

 

The funeral over and done, you decided, at 80, to do a final deep powder

descent, the knitting of bygone days not easily shredded and forgotten.

What did you finally see you had not yet seen? What the awakening? What

softening of a rock hard heart? And Delores, what your too rock hard

reactions, what your reactionary and stubborn tendencies?

 

I saw, many times, in the summer, in the alpine, bouquet upon bouquet, of

flowers, such beauty, such bounty, grew silently slowly—what the whispered

wisdom, seeing and listening better pathway forward?

 

Yes, you died on the mountain Dolores called home, hearth of the heart.

The thick ropes of mountain memories are not easily torn, ripped apart,

lover’s knot a myth never to ignore.

 

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning”

– T.S. Eliot “Little Gidding”

 

montani semper liberi

-Ron Dart