Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [37]
Around nine-thirty A.M. a dagger of sunlight appears behind me on the canyon floor. The light blade is teasingly close but still three feet behind my shoes. I haven’t yet fully rewarmed from the night’s chill, and I yearn for even a small touch of sun on my skin. After five minutes, the dagger has stabbed toward my heels enough that when I step down next to the hole where I dropped my keys, stretching my body until my arm pulls at my wrist, I can extend my left leg behind me so the sunshine caresses my ankle and lower calf. For ten minutes, I hold still, alternating between stretching out my left and then my right leg as the sunlight moves across the canyon floor. Like a yoga pose, this sun stretch welcomes a new day. The question crosses my mind of how many mornings will I be here to perform this matinal rite, but I push it back and relish the soothing warmth on my calves. Climbing up the north wall above my right leg, the light dagger bends and warps over the sandstone undulations until it ascends above my leg’s reach. Watching the beam scale the last three feet to where a suspended chockstone blocks it from my view, I realize it is the only direct sun I will get during the day.
With the sunlight’s presence, my emotional status lifts, and I feel rejuvenated for a time. Taking advantage of this positive infusion, I take up my knife and begin another two-hour cycle of pecking at the rock. I speculate on the odds of being found and the timing of when outside efforts will initiate a potential search. It looks bleak from every angle. Kristi and Megan barely know me. When I didn’t show up at their truck late yesterday afternoon, they probably thought I blew them off. They don’t know what my truck looks like, either, so even if they went over to the Horseshoe Canyon Trailhead, they wouldn’t know if my vehicle was there or not. Since I didn’t confirm with Brad and Leah that I would see them at the Scooby party, they wouldn’t be alerted to a problem. My roommates will miss me, but they don’t know where I am. If they should get so concerned to notify the Aspen police, the authorities won’t do anything until Tuesday night, at the earliest, once I’m overdue by over twenty-four hours.
It seems more probable to me that my manager at the Ute Mountaineer will call my parents to find out why I haven’t shown up for work. At that point, maybe they’ll get the police to poll my credit-card companies for my recent purchasing history and track me to Moab. This thought causes me to mentally slap myself, thinking about the purchases I made—I used my credit card only for gas in Glenwood Springs, where the highway from Aspen meets the interstate. I could have gone either east or west from there. I used my debit card to get groceries and top off my gas tank in Moab before I drove in to Horseshoe. Or did I? Maybe I used my credit card. Now I can’t remember. I hope it’s part of the missing-person’s procedure to check debit purchases, too.
If the police notify the National Park Service and the NPS initiates a general search on Wednesday, they’re unlikely to find my vehicle right away—the commanders will focus on the areas closer to Moab first. I saw a sign at the trailhead notifying visitors that rangers lead weekend tours down into Horseshoe Canyon to the major pictograph panels; the best shot for a ranger to find my truck will be when they come back to Horseshoe on Saturday, if they’re looking for it by then. A lucky strike, or more thorough second-stage canvasing, might mean they pinpoint my truck in the first day of searching, Thursday, and by the time they sweep the canyon and move all the way through Blue John, it’ll be Friday.
Friday, then, before someone pops his or her head over that chockstone ten feet in front and above me.
Friday.
But that’s at the earliest. Sunday’s more likely to be the day the