Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [125]
Let it go, Aron. Leave the rock there. Why cause yourself any more pain when it’s a futile endeavor to begin with?
I put my sock back on my foot and pull it as high as it will stretch on my calf, knowing I can’t afford to lose any of its insulating effect during the coming night. Somewhere inside my mind, I know I won’t survive tonight in Blue John Canyon. It’s not something I debate or internally discuss, but when I consider that I am going to die in a matter of hours, it rings true. Contrasting my burst of anger earlier during my entrapment, when I lashed out and hit the boulder with the palm of my hand, I accept this statement with a peaceful sense of acknowledgment that I am not in control of this situation. If my time is up, then it is up, and there’s not a thing I can do to stave it off any longer. And if my time isn’t up, then it’s not, and there’s nothing further I need to worry about. But I think the former is much more likely than the latter. I understand that this is the end, that I won’t survive the night, and the thought does not stir me, because I have stopped fighting for control. Letting go of my desire to dictate the outcome of my entrapment releases a disconnected feeling of lightheartedness that vaguely approximates bliss. I wonder if this is what rapture feels like, that mystical experience when each soul relinquishes its earthly embodiment and connects with the divine. It’s not the same as when I have my out-of-body trances, and it’s not apathy or resignation, it’s more like I’ve let go of a spiritual burden. I feel like I’ve recognized a great truth: Some other marvelous force is in control, and has been all along. Give it whatever name I want, all I know for sure is that I don’t have to sweat it out anymore, because I’m not in charge.
Clammy supernatural breezes suck the heat from my body, and my shivering escalates intensely. The canyon is an ice box. Each night has been progressively harder, but these are the killing winds.
Counting from dusk till dawn, I get through only two of the painfully frigid nine hours before I decide it is time to make a final annotation. My watch confirms that it is April 30, for another hour, at least. I had lost interest in time during the afternoon, but now every minute seems important, as any one of them could be my last. I re-etch my name in the sandstone wall over my left shoulder, tracing over the letters I carved with my knife on Saturday after I wrote “Geologic Time Includes Now.” Above the four capitalized letters of my first name, “ARON,” I scratch into the red rock, “OCT 75.” Below my name, I make the complementary scratching “APR 03.” It doesn’t occur to me to write “May,” as I am certain I won’t see the dawn at the far end of this hideously cold night. I finish the epitaph by carving “RIP” above my name and birth month, then I lean back in my harness and set the knife on top of the chockstone before I slip off into a trance.
Color bursts in my mind, and then I walk through the canyon wall on my own this time, stepping into a living room. A blond three-year-old boy in a red polo shirt comes running across a sunlit hardwood floor in what I somehow know is my future home. By the same intuitive perception, I know the boy is my own. I bend to scoop him into my left arm, using my handless right arm to balance him, and we laugh together as I swing him up to my shoulder. This interaction is a powerful departure from the previous trances; in the others, I was spellbound and restrained from engaging other people. But now I