Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [137]
Thirteen
Day Six: Enlightenment and Euphoria
It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything.
—BRAD PITT, as Tyler Durden, in Fight Club
PEEKING OUT from the inky confines of my rope bag, I watch dawn pushing its way into the canyon. The fresh daylight reduces the visions that dominated my night. However, my brain is so twisted around from 120 hours without sleep that the new day’s reality feels like a hallucinatory fabrication itself. The ugly chockstone on my arm is hardly discernible from the imagery generated by my delirious mind. With five days of gritty build-up pasted to my contact lenses, my eyes hurt at every blink, and wavering fringes of cloud frame my dingy vision. I can’t hold my head upright anymore; it lolls off against the northern canyon wall, or sometimes I shift and allow it to fall forward, where my left forearm braces it. I am a zombie. I am the undead.
It is Thursday, May 1. I cannot believe I’m still alive. I should have died days ago. I don’t understand how I lived through last night’s hypothermic conditions. In fact, I’m almost disappointed that I’ve survived the night, because now the epitaph on the wall is incorrect—I didn’t “rest in peace” in April, after all. For a short moment, I ponder whether to fix the date, but decide not to bother. It won’t matter to the body recovery team, if they even notice it, and the coroner will be able to discern my death date from the extent of decomposition within a day or so. That’s good enough, I figure.
Where is the confidence I felt during the vision I had of the little blond boy, my future son? Psychologically, I thought I had hit bottom the night before, when I carved my epitaph, only to then find assurance in picking up that toddler. But my buoyancy has been enchained by the stoic might of the boulder and the bitterness of the piss that etches ridges into the roof of my mouth. Drinking sip after sip of urine from my grotesque stash in the Nalgene has eroded the inside of my mouth, leaving my palate raw, reminding me that I am going to die. The piss’s acidity dissolves any remaining self-belief I found in the middle of the night. If I am going to live, why am I drinking my own urine? Isn’t that the classic mark of a condemned man? I have been sentenced and left to decay.
It’s eight-thirty A.M., but the raven hasn’t flown over me yet. I wonder after it for a time but lose my thoughts to the insects that are swarming with all-time intensity around the chockstone. After I swat a few of the flying bugs with my left hand, killing them to entertain myself, I look at my yellow Suunto, which says 8:45. Even the bird has forsaken me—it has not been later than 8:30 for its daily flight, but today, nothing, no raven. In its absence, I feel that my time draws nearer, as though it was a totemic deity sustaining me.
A desire bubbles up: I want to die with music in my ears. Somewhere along the days, even that dreadful BBC song from Austin Powers lost its hold on my psyche. But I can’t bring a single melody to mind. All I have is the awful hush of the canyon; silence maddens me. I need my CD player. The headphones haven’t left my ears or neck in five days, but the player and two CDs are in the main compartment of my backpack. I sling my sack off my back with three easy movements and rest it on my raised left knee, my fingers diving to the bottom, where they find the Discman and discs…and a half inch of sand.
Before I extract the equipment, I know it’s a hopeless cause. The discs are scratched beyond playability. Five days in the desert have left their plastic coatings looking like I took a belt sander to them. No matter. The Discman won’t even spin the disc that’s in it already. It tells me NO DISC each time