Apparently It Was Illegal

but Gary and Lauren climbed a sculpture shaped like a pile of blocks winding into the sky like a chunky staircase, a staircase set on the rim of a mountain. One at a time, college students from all over the world leaped up those blocks like children at a playground, posing in the breeze at the top for photos and accolades and ignoring the 5,000 foot drop if their footing failed them.

"That's high enough," I called when Gary and Lauren were halfway up. They smiled, I snapped a photo, and then they came down.

I guess they didn't see the blockades, barricades, and warning signs and didn't think it unusual to crawl through a hole in a fence to gain access to that sculpture. A minute after they came down, a policeman apprehended the young woman who attempted to climbed up immediately after Gary and Lauren's descent.

Later in the afternoon, I lit a candle for my mom in the remote but spectacular monastery carved into the side of that mountain. She would have loved it.