Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston [95]
I catch the distinct constellation of Perseus out my left window. Except in one ravine that I suspect is the waterless San Rafael River drainage, there are no trees and only scarce bunches of grass growing higher than a few inches. On occasion, I cross a fence line at a cattle guard—the bright yellow bars entrenched in the road have been recently painted, telling me that somebody still uses this land. Still, there are no lights to break the desolate spell that the night casts over the barren country. A beer bottle appears in the throw of my headlights; I don’t swerve to miss it. My front right wheel hits the neck of the bottle, and it jumps up, bumping the bottom of my truck. I think, “Hayduke has been here,” recalling the eco-protagonist of Edward Abbey’s The Monkeywrench Gang, who protests the presence of roads by chucking his beer bottles at them.
Periodically, my truck hurtles over grooved sandstone slabs in the road tread, where county graders have scraped outcroppings flat. The graders have piled earthen banks along the roadsides, which block my headlights from reaching the desert floor. I fly over the edge of the next swale at 40 mph, to meet another curve in the road and slam my brakes hard. Dramatically reducing my speed just in time, I make the corner and shift from third into fourth on the next straightaway. I rev my truck obnoxiously through a skeletal forest of scrub bushes and rush through the night.
Another rabbit.
Another fence line.
Another curve.
Unexpectedly, a small brown sign flashes past me, pointing out the road spur to Horseshoe Canyon. I stop and reverse, then turn left down the significantly bumpier approach to the dirt parking area. There are three other vehicles and two encampments at the trailhead, despite the signs prohibiting camping in the parking area. I turn my truck around and find a flat spot near the sign board welcoming visitors to the Horseshoe Canyon quadrant of Canyonlands National Park. After organizing the splayed equipment in the bed of my truck, I roll out my sleeping bag and pad and call it a night. I drift off to sleep, thinking about the Blue John–Horseshoe circuit that I will undertake in the morning, the wind rocking my truck in the organic lullaby of canyon country.
Day Four: Out of Food and Water
I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe—what other choice was there?…We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself…believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing….
—LANCE ARMSTRONG, It’s Not About the Bike
DIFFUSE SUNLIGHT catches on the swirling undersides of thin clouds high above the Utah desert. “It’s gonna be a nice sunset,” I think from the bottom of the fissure. I hope that the clouds will stick around and help hold in the heat tonight. It’s early Monday evening. I’ve been awake for fifty-seven hours. I’ve been trapped for fifty hours. And I’ve had the same song stuck in my head for forty-three hours.
Like a radio with the scan button permanently depressed, my restless and unrested mind expends its energy trolling for distraction, only to land on the same station again and again. The station has but one ten-second sample of one song. Over and over, always with the same lyric; “BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC5, BBC6, BBC7, BBC Heaven!” It’s not even a real song. I feel like the antagonist Dr. Evil, my plans foiled again. I’m left shaking my fist in the air—“Why won’t you leave me alone, Austin Powers? Why must you torment me?”
My fatigue has taken on the heavily drugged feel of an intense fever cooking my brain. I’ve fallen asleep in some odd places before—standing in front of a painting in a Paris museum; sitting at a 110-decibel