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By Root 759 0

encouraged me in my transition, but there were a few who could scarcely believe what I was telling them—that I was quitting, didn’t have another job lined up, and wasn’t going back to school. It just wasn’t something that Intel engineers did. But at twenty-six, after a modest career of five years, I officially retired. “Holding a corporate job” joined “living east of the Rocky Mountains” on a two-item list of things I vowed never to do again in my life. Thus began a journey that would take me to the summit of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, through thirty-eight states and Canada in six months, and end in a little place called Aspen, Colorado, elevation 7,890 feet.

Day Two: Failing Options

Desert dawn

Rise up early, lift your song

On the breath of life that rises from the

Glowing stone

Feel the rock of ages, smooth against your skin

Smell the breath of flowers dancing on the wind Dancing on the wind.

—STRING CHEESE INCIDENT,

with lyricist Christina Callicott, “Desert Dawn”

AS THE MORNING HEATS UP, I no longer have to unproductively hammer my knife into the rock just to stay warm. My aching grip cries out for a change of routine, so I leave the hacking and chipping for another time. Even without sleep, I feel an increased energy from the ambient light in the canyon. It boosts me in the same way that dawn has done when I’ve hiked through the night. Today, though, there is no end in sight. This isn’t a climb with a final pitch or an endurance hike that will be over after a set length of time. My struggle against the boulder is open-ended. I will be here until I solve this problem or I die.

From desert survival stories I’ve read, I know dehydration can kill you by slightly variable mechanisms, but fundamentally, they all entail your organs not receiving adequate nutrients to the point that they shut down. Some people expire once their kidneys fail and their body’s own toxicity kills them; other people last until their heart collapses. Under exertion in hot environments, dehydration can lead to overheating, and you effectively cook your brain. Whatever way death might come to me, convulsions and severe cramping will most likely herald it. I start to speculate…

I wonder what kidney failure will feel like? Not good, probably. Maybe like when you eat so much you get cramps in your back. Only worse, I bet. It’s gonna be a rough way to die. Hypothermia would be better, if it’s fast onset. At least then I could slip off in mind numbness and not feel it. The temperature didn’t dip that low last night, though, only about 55 degrees. Not cold enough for severe hypothermia. Maybe death by a flash flood would be better? Not so much. Is it better to go out with a scream cut off by a wall of muddy water, to fade silently into a cold-induced coma, or to have the final experience of the gasping spasms of heart failure? I don’t know…

But I’m ready for action, not for dying. It is time to get a better anchor established, one that I can use to rig a lifting system and try to move the boulder. If I can rotate the front of the chockstone up, maybe as much as a foot, I can pull out my hand, though that’s a long way to move a rock this size. Maybe I can budge the boulder backward enough to ease its grip and create a two-inch gap—that’s all I need to get the thicker pad of my thumb out of its trap. I know it’s going to hurt worse than the accident itself, because it will be slow and self-inflicted. The hand is done for; I’ve already written it off. But what happens when blood starts circulating in it again? Will it carry the decay back into my bloodstream and poison my heart? Medically, I’m uninformed about the potential threat involved, but spreading toxins seems like a logical result if I’m able to suddenly free my hand. It’s a risk I accept, and one I can only hope to face.

My first move in attempting to create a second anchor is to unclip my stowed fluorescent yellow webbing from its carabiner on the back of my harness and unwrap the tidy chain of storage loops. I untie the knot holding the two ends together and