Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [80]
“OK, then, God, since you’re apparently busy…Devil, if you’re listening, I need some help here. I’ll trade you my arm, my soul, whatever you want. Just get me out of here. You want me never to climb again, I can give that up. Just show me the dotted line.”
I stop and sigh. While there’s not anything really funny about my joke, I’m glad I haven’t stopped trying to amuse myself yet.
I think that maybe this is a test, a lesson. Perhaps once I figure out the lesson, then I’ll get free. Is that it? What am I supposed to get from this? What am I supposed to learn?
I think about a lesson my Aspen friend Rob Cooper and I have talked about a few times. Rob isn’t a guy of many words when it comes to philosophy, but he’s often proved his deeper side in a single targeted remark. Typically, our conversation patterns would start with me telling Rob about a recent adventure, and out of the blue, he would reply with his favorite non sequitur: “It’s not what you do, Aron, it’s who you are.” Derailed from my story, I would spend the next ten minutes questioning Rob as to exactly what he meant by that. He’d repeat the axiom, and in the end, still not understanding, I would attempt to refute him. In my view, we define who we are precisely by what we do. We find our identity in action. If we do nothing, we are nothing. Our bodies even take on a look that is largely the result of our lifestyle. I never grasped what Rob was getting at. No matter how long I argued my side of the point, I never convinced him, either.
Perhaps my skewed perspective from the depth of this canyon gives me the oblique angle I need to reconsider Rob’s comment. In thinking about what he has said, I have a breakthrough: Rob was sensing in the accounts of my adventures an unspoken request for his approval. More a reassurance than a challenge, his reply told me that it didn’t matter to him what I had done or achieved. He deemed me a friend because of who I am—as a person, not as a climber, a skier, an outdoorsman. My confusion at his assertion had shown how right he was. I got defensive because I wanted him to respect me for my accomplishments. I had fallen prey to the mentality that places sole value on achievement while overlooking the process of achieving. Rob, along with everyone else I cared about in my life, would either respect me for who I am—as in how I treat others—or they wouldn’t. My risk-taking didn’t affect my integrity as a friend. Huh. I think I get it now. Maybe that’s what I’m here to learn?
Well, if that was it, Aron, then the chockstone should split in two and fall harmlessly to the sand right…about…now.
Predictably, nothing happens. For another thirty seconds, nothing continues to happen, and I quit waiting. Maybe that small epiphany was an emotional table scrap, something to ease my tired conscience. I know I’m not trapped here waiting for enlightenment—I’m trapped here because there’s a huge boulder sitting on my hand. How big is this thing, anyway? It’s heavier than I am, but I made it move a little yesterday when I was trying to lift it. I doubt it weighs much more than a couple hundred pounds, or there’s no way I could’ve budged it at all. With a 6:1 mechanical advantage system multiplying most of my body’s weight standing in the haul-line foot loops, I should be able to dislodge the chockstone even if I lose half the lifting force back to friction. It’s too late in the evening to start reconfiguring the pulley system. I’m using most of the critical pieces of webbing as limb warmers, and I don’t want to give up even their slight insulation.
Night erupts from the canyon and fills the sky. Closing my eyes, I make a wish and give a visual voice to my deepest desire. I see myself catching a lift on the incessant wind, riding the tidal wave of darkness out of here, letting it carry me like a raven over the desert scrub straight up to the void. I soar over the barren buttes, maroon tablelands, and buckled mantle of central Utah, heading west over the frigid black Great Basin and Sierra Nevada Mountains devoid of city lights, the land