Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [106]
My smile grows even wider. Judson kept asking me how much farther the milestone camp was; I could see where we were going, but the moonlit night distorted my sense of distance, and I made earnest prediction after earnest prediction that we would be at the huts in fifteen more minutes, then five more minutes, until, after a dozen estimates of “five more minutes,” we finally tromped into camp just in time for sunrise. I was lucky Judson didn’t drop me in a crevasse for my lousy guessing.
“I was remembering, Chip, when you and I drove to Flagstaff and back for Keller Williams. That was another blitzkrieg. Oh, man, so many incredible times. Places I went with my friend Erik Kemnitz—to his house in Rochester one weekend in college. When I went out to California a couple times and met up with Soha and Craig and Buck, I think I even got a couple of you guys to your first Phish show.”
I’m feeling my tiredness delaying my efforts to speak coherently. Simply being awake seems to be fully taxing my brainpower. I need rest, but I can’t sleep. Bracing my left elbow against the southern canyon wall, I hold my head up with my hand and continue.
“Bryan Long, that one we did last year. Mountain biking and hiking and hot springs, then two Cheese shows, and another two Cheese shows. Zach, thanks for being my friend, we got to go hiking up on Sandia Peak with Erik that day. Ahhh, fun. I do appreciate all those times, so many good folks in my life. Rana, our trip to Telluride to see the Cheese. That was my best ‘last day’ ever, skiing in the full-blown pigtails, tie-dye shirt, pink fluorescent boa, our flags flying high that day.”
My smile is cracking my dry lips. I need some lip balm, but I’ll wait to get to it in a minute. Even the pain of my lips makes me feel thankful for the people I love.
“So thanks, everybody. Thanks for the good times. I do appreciate each and every one of you. Norm and Sandy, you guys are like my folks away from home. All my friends’ parents, too, for bringing up such wonderful people who have participated in my life, thank you. My friends in Aspen that I got to stay with over the last six months, beautiful, beautiful people, all of you, thank you. Bryan and Jenn Welker, Bryan Gonzales and Mike Check, thanks. Rachel, you’re a wonderful woman, thank you. I could say the same thing about a lot of people in my life. Thankfully, I’m getting to say it now. I love you all. Hugs.”
Wow. How good do I feel now? I wonder if this is a bit like my life flashing before my eyes, but on a slower time line. What makes the human brain respond to death with reflection? I always figured people saw images of their family as a way of saying goodbye, but considering what the memories have done for me—giving me a surge of positive energy, smiling, feeling happy—I ruminate over an ulterior purpose. Perhaps the whole life’s highlights reel thing is a survival instinct, something engrained in our subconscious, the brain’s final trick in the bag to continue its own existence. I imagine that once adrenaline has failed to engage a successful fight-or-flight impulse, the flash of memories acts as a secondary reflex, motivating us to keep fighting even when we don’t think there’s any fight left in us. In the face of an imminent demise, the medulla oblongata kicks into involuntary overdrive and says, “You think you’re done? How about all those people who care about you? How about all those people you care about?” and bam! you’ve got a little more spunk. Maybe that’s why suicide seems most tempting when you don’t have people telling you they love you, or when you don’t care if they do—there is no flash, the backup system fails. Maybe that’s why our brains store memories in the first place, to spur on a stubborn body when the endgame has begun. Well, whatever. I’ll take the happiness and uplift and leave the psychobabble. I feel good, that’s the important thing.
Come noon, I am biding my death, shackled to the canyon wall. With so much