I Dared the Mountain to Kill Me Too

It Was Nearing the End of Hunting Season … and One of Us Wouldn't Make It Home

By: Randy McKenzie

One cold November evening changed my life forever. The day began like any other snowy November day in Northwestern Montana. I had already quit school by then so my buddy and I loaded up the snowmobile and headed up early in the day to scout for a herd of elk. My brother Rod, a year younger than I, got a later start, having to wait until after school. We were both avid hunters and we were anxious to get our elk before hunting season ended that weekend.

It was an awesome day for hunting… lots of snow. You can see tracks real good in the snow. But something just didn't seem right that day. Neither my partner nor I could really get into hunting, so late in the afternoon we loaded the snowmobile and returned home. We were sitting around the wood stove, just chit-chatting with our folks.

Rod and a buddy decided to go looking for an elk herd they suspected was deep in the back country. When they got as far as they could drive, they spotted a herd of elk on the other side of the mountain. Forging through the snow, they covered a distance of about two miles across the canyon, in hot pursuit of the elk.

Pretty soon it had become dark and the family back at home was waiting for my brother and his friend to come off the mountain. We weren't real concerned, at first. Rod and I were both expert hunters and the mountains had been our playground since we were toddlers. We knew how to survive. 

Our family sat down and ate dinner. Somewhere around 7:30 that night my brother's partner walked off the mountain and knocked on the door of our house. He had gotten separated from my brother, but after hours of waiting for Rod, hollering and firing his rifle with no response, he knew he had to get help.

He had run five miles off the mountain, across country to get to our house as quickly as he could. We all jumped in our pickups and headed up to the top of the mountain. A storm was setting in and it was snowing pretty good. A few neighbors joined our search party.

We all forged to the top of the mountain.

The snow was getting pretty deep – it was over the front bumper of our pickup. We had chains and everyone was familiar with navigating the serpentine mountain roads, even in the dark.

I remember all the guys were hollering and laughing and joking saying, "Yeah, we'll all be freezing to death looking for Rod up here on the  mountain and he'll be down at the house warming himself by the fire." We all knew how dangerous the mountains could be, especially during a storm, but no one wanted to even think a sixteen year old young man might be lost in a storm or worse.

Abruptly, the road ended and Rod's friend and I ran together for a half mile off the backside of the mountain. It's was tough going, exhausting any time of the year, but especially as the storm beat down on us, stinging our faces with icy needles. We hollered and shot our guns, but with no answer, so we ran back to the pickups.

Some of the guys were getting ready to head up the ridge to see if they could track Rod. By then, it was snowing so hard it was up to our waists. We all charged around the canyon as fast as we could through the deepening snow and it seemed like we were going pretty fast, but in reality it took us most of the night just to make a circle around the canyon.

We could see Rod's tracks every now and again, going down the mountain. Then I heard my dad holler and I ran as fast as I could to where he was calling from. I'll never forget the sight… a huge circle of deep red, like a dark sea in ghostly contrast to the sparkling white snow lit up by our lanterns. About 20 yards down the mountain we found Rod's body lying limply.

It was a very sober, angry bunch of guys trying to figure out just what had happened. It appeared he was not properly dressed for the weather. He must have been in too much a hurry coming out of school that day. His tumble down the mountain dislodged his hunting knife, stabbing him in the arm, slicing through an artery.

We knew that there was no sign of life, no chance of reviving him. So we radioed back to the ranch to have them call the sheriff to give us permission to carry the body off the mountain.

We started the long journey back to the pickups. We all wanted to help carry the body, but by then we had been trekking around the canyon all night long and each one of us was thoroughly exhausted. The snow was so deep and the storm was still gathering speed, so we had to drag Rod's body out, instead of carrying it, to the pickups. It was about 5-6 am by the time we got back to the vehicles.

We slowly drove off the mountain and turned the corner at the bottom where the coroner was waiting to take his body. As Rod's body was slid into the coroner's vehicle, my dad and I turned to go home. Little did we know how much this would change our lives.

Even though my dad and I worked side by side together as loggers, never once did we speak about the accident or Rod's death. We both loved each other and Rod very much, but we just kept all the pain tightly bottled up. The silence between us continued over the next 30-years.

Randy, Rod, Grandma, and Therese

Later that day I drove into town and a guy was there at the gas station. He was laughing and talking about what had happened. He said, "I can't believe your dumb brother got lost on the mountain!" I punched him in the nose and he fell to the ground stunned, and that was the end of the fight. Anger was already boiling up, close to the surface. He didn't know my brother had died and later apologized.

A little later on, a neighbor came by and I overheard him talking to my dad about the accident. He didn't know I was there, but I heard him say, "It's too bad it was Rod that died and not Randy." Those words charted my path from that day on, as I intentionally chose a life of risk and danger, always hoping each day would be my last. The next few months I walked in a daze.

The neighbor's words became my mantra, "It should have been me that died."

Everyone in our family and in our small town mourned for a long time. Eventually almost everyone began giving their hearts to God after Rod's death – but it took me quite a few more years to deal with it. My way of dealing with Rod's death was to challenge the mountain every Thanksgiving weekend. I'd go back to where we found Rod's body, and no matter what the weather was like and I'd challenge the mountain to take my life. It almost did take my life a time or two…

I was angry. I wanted revenge. I wanted answers.

The more I focused on the pain and the injustice, the angrier I became. The more I kept burying the pain the deeper it became rooted in my life. It began to manifest as a death wish. I would take any chance. I lived on the edge. If there was anything that other people didn't want to do, or too risky, I would do it. I had no fear of anything or anyone.

My anger manifested in many ways:

• I became a firefighter… and when other firefighters were coming out of burning buildings, I was going in. I've lived through explosions, burning walls falling on top of me, I've survived being submerged in an icy river for over an hour and a half while saving a man's life, I've worked in hazardous materials almost all my life and volunteered for the worst possible work conditions… and much more.
• I rode bulls, fought bulls as a rodeo clown, and rode broncs.
  
• I raced professionally – Motocross – 200 mph with no brakes.
• I burned through several marriages.
• I almost died too many times to count.

I just shut down the pain and went on with life.

I've since learned that it's much better to deal with pain when it happens than to wait until it festers and grows worse. If I had to do over again, I would talk about what happened. I would allow the tears to come and I wouldn't try to suck it up and be tough.

Mom and Dad got divorced not long after Rod died. I wonder what would have happened to our family if we had all learned to talk about the tough things, if we had known how to release the pain.

The legacy I want to leave for my sons and my daughter, and now my grandchildren as well includes this advice: Don't waste a day without being grateful for your family and friends, even the ones who you just don't get along with. Rod and I never got along – we were always fighting and competing with each other, but I loved him. I love my dad, too, but I wish we could talk. I learned, perhaps a little late in life (but it's never too late) that sucking it up and bottling up your pain, anger, and rage only brings destruction. I know what it's like to live with a death wish, to attempt suicide, to suffer broken relationships, and much more.

The anger that I thought was so deeply buried no one, including me, would ever find it had a way of exploding at the worst possible times. I kept people at a distance, only letting them see what I thought they wanted or needed to see. And if anyone came too close (they might see who I really was) I allowed the anger to drive them away.

Love is the only cure-all for every human dysfunction. And it begins with learning to accept and to love ourselves, first. Self-hatred was killing me, revenge was killing me, and a need to hide the real me caused untold more grief than if I had just learned to deal with the pain when it first happened. I hope no one has to repeat my mistakes, but if you are in that place of self-hatred, anger, fear, and rage right now… just know that it's not hopeless. It's not too late.

It's a choice to let go. It's a choice to love yourself. It's a choice to forgive.

You  may not feel like it and it may not seem to make a difference, at first. But just keep making choices…. look yourself in the mirror and say, "I love you" or "I forgive you" and give yourself a gift. Let yourself out of the prison of self-hatred. And pretty soon you'll be a gift to everyone around you as they see your transformed life.

If you believe in the message of this story, or if you know of someone who lives with some dark secrets buried way down deep inside, maybe you can do me a favor and "Like" this story, leave a comment, or forward it on to your friends and family.

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Tagged as: Real People Real Stories, Rewriting the Future