While descending from the top of Mt. Humphrey’s, Arizona’s highest point, I had the idea to make a video interviewing my fellow peak-baggers about our current national crisis. I’d never seen a mountain so populated with golden-agers, who were walking slowly up and down the pine-clad peak in twos and threes. Surely some of them would have something wry, pointed, or wise to say about Palin and, as she might put it, the failin’, bailin’, and complainin’.

Alternatively, perhaps a surprise storm would barrel across the unbroken expanse of autumnal blue above, pinning us to the upper flanks, and I could recount the geriaction in an Outside or AARP Magazine exclusive, “Into Thin Hair.”

Alas, I would have no opportunity to wax rueful over the role of rheumatism in an alpine death toll, as the day remained windless and warm, perfect stick-a-minicam-in-a-stranger’s-face conditions.

Unfortunately, I’d reached and left the summit an hour ago. I stopped to look back up at the peak’s rocky crest, so far away. Maybe I could make the video later that week, on another peak in Arizona. Why not? McCain’s state teemed with oldsters. I turned from the summit and continued down, jamming my headphones into my ears to lull me back into complacency.

He passed me in a flash. I caught just a glimpse of a gaunt, brown face, white sideburns, and the grim set of a mouth. I stopped and watched him go. Though the trail was littered with shards and blocks of basalt, he moved steadily, unlike most hikers lurching over the rocks. He was tall, wore all black, and carried a pack of faded blue.

I turned back to my descent. The abstract electronica seeping from my iPod turned to one thin, long note, then dwindled to silence. I turned around to peer up at him. The reedy music resumed. I headed after him.

I caught him as he turned a switchback. He saw me and stopped.

“Sorry,” I said, “I’m working on a project. I’m making a video, asking opinions of people who are up here today about what’s going on right now – “

“You followed me back up here just for this?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to be filmed.”

“Okay – “

“But I’m dazzled.”

‘What?’

‘I’m dazzled. Absolutely dazzled.”

“Please, can I please film you? This is exactly what – ”

“No,” he said firmly. “No filming. I’ll tell you this just for you. I’m dazzled at what’s happening. I never thought that such institutions . . . Goldman Sachs! If you had ever told me — I’ve been to Goldman Sachs — that it would no longer be an investment bank? That the Lehman Brothers would go bankrupt? Impossible.”

Damnit, I wanted this on film. I’d struck a chord. But he wouldn’t stand to be asked again. And I wanted to hear it. Okay, just for me. His eyes bore into mine through oversized, pink aviator glasses.

“Do you have any concept of what has happened with these credit default swaps? This country’s GDP is 14 trillion or so, and there are 62 trillion dollars worth of outstanding CDSs! The scale of this mess is unimaginable.”

He talked rapidly about derivatives, CDOs, options, futures, bonds, and “paper,” the chilling spray of financial arcana that has doused us all in the past weeks. Clearly, it was his native language.

“The very best mathematicians in the world work for these firms, the very best, and this is what they’ve done. How could they not see this coming?”

“So this is your industry,” I said.

“I’ve had interests in the financial industry,’ he said archly. “I was in a Fortune 500 company, a company in the top 20 of the Fortune 500. Our balance sheets were in the billions. But this.

“When Bear Stearns failed, I started to look into it. I took a look at Goldman Sachs’ numbers, just to see. And they were in trillions! I’d never seen than before. And not a bit of oversight. Nobody minding the store. Nobody!”

He was flushed, glaring at me. A bead of sweat or snot hung from the underside of his nose.

“And on top of this, this stupid, stupid war. Those kids, oh, those kids.” He shook his head. The bubble under his nose elongated into a strand.

“Coming back like they are, shattered, destroyed. God! They’re strong now, they’re young, they can pretend. But when they’re 40 or 50, they’re going to wonder what they gave up, why they lost their limbs, what it was for? Those kids!” His voice broke. “Coming home in pieces!”

He was crying. Never before had I made a stranger weep with a question. The snot hung in a rope from his nose. His eyes behind his rose colored glasses were anguished, brimming.

“I’m not a religious man,” he said. “I have no religious affiliations. But how stupid, oh, my God, how stupid to march on Mesopotamia. To invade such a holy place, such an ancient place, what have we done?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Wiping his nose with his sleeve, he started to go.

“No, no,” I said. “I was the one – ”

“You can put this in your preface,” he said, turning back. “I am not religious. I venerate no institutions. That’s why I’m up here right now. This is all I have. All I want. The tree and the mountain.”

He looked at the fire-blackened trunk of a snag that twisted towards the blue above.

“We’re like Newton, like Isaac Newton, barely at the edge of a revelation. We know nothing of this,” he said, raising his arms to the sweep of mountain around us. “We know nothing of this, and this is all I know.”

He looked at me, clearing his throat.

“The tree and the mountain – these I venerate. Have a good day.”

And with that he turned toward the top. I watched him go, thinking to take a picture of his receding figure just before he climbed past rocks, out of sight.

I turned back down to my own trail, somewhat stunned. Shambling downward, I didn’t notice that my headphones jounced ludicrously out of my shirt until two little cherubic girls passed me with a giggly hello.

I stuffed the phones back in my ears. Janis Joplin was singing ‘Me and Bobby McGee.’

“But I’d trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday . . .”

I took the phones back out and stuffed them in my pocket.

Thanks but no thanks, Janis. No need to rub it in.