Between a Rock and a Hard Place
From TradgirlWiki
review by Alex Chiang
The body of climbing literature is rife with epic tales, accounts of improbable survival, stories that begin "and there I was...". Occasionally, one of those stories will transcend the limited audience of mountaineering enthusiasts and ensconce itself in the collective consciousness of the general populace. The '96 Everest disaster comes to mind thanks to Jon Krakauer's wildly popular "Into Thin Air". Joe Simpson's "Touching the Void" describing his own personal hell in Peru's Cordillera Blanca is another example of a commercially successful novel and film. Going back a bit further in time, Bonatti's incredible open air bivouac above 8000m on K2 and the ensuing controversy occupied front page news for months.
Why do these stories fascinate and enthrall us, capture our imaginations? Partly the same reason we slow down and stare agog at car accidents. Partly because we're encouraged and uplifted by the tenacious display of human spirit. And partly because they provide a mirror with which to gaze inward and wonder what our own characters are like.
Aron Ralston's story is one of these. Trapped in a Utah slot canyon, amputating his own arm to survive, his is one that has captured our imaginations, leaving us shaking our heads in wonder. He's written a book, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" to tell us his account and perhaps loan us a shard of mirror so that we can catch a fleeting glimpse of who we are.
In the grand tradition of epic storytelling, we start in the middle. Ralston describes his day on his most fateful of days, setting the scene, and injecting some color. We learn tantalizingly that his epic almost never was, as he had met two fellow travellers on the trail and even descended the upper part of Blue John Canyon together. About halfway through the canyon, the two women decided they were done and invited Aron to leave with them and grab a beer. A casual invitation, turned down as casually, for he'd had his sights set on seeing some ancient petroglyphs farther down-canyon. In retrospect, a narrow brush with escape, but then again, knowing these sorts of things ahead of time remains out of the reach of mortals. A short while later, the fuckness hits -- Aron is trapped -- and thus the story begins.
Hook now set, it's time for some backstory. We learn about Aron's childhood and his formative years. We hear a bit about his early adventures and mishaps, and we come to know the person standing in the shadow of a media caricature. He's more than just "the guy who cut his arm off". He's an honors graduate of Carnegie Mellon, a top tier engineering university, with a double major in French and minor in piano performance, no less. He's a mechanical engineer at Intel Corporation. And he's completely dedicated to living his dream. Faced with a choice of keeping his job at Intel or training for an attempt on Alaska's Denali, he walks away from the complacent corporate life at the age of 26 to pursue his passion.
And so it goes, flipping back and forth between his travails in the canyon and witnessing his growth as a climber, we start to see some patterns emerge. He has a habit of embracing risk, continually pushing the envelope. Among other things, he escapes drowning in the Colorado River, self-arrests before plunging 2000 feet into the void on Long's Peak, and avoids getting killed in an avalanche on Resolution Peak. He pushes himself along at a frenetic pace, as a man possessed, gaining experience along the way, but not without such costs as frostbite and broken friendships.
To what end, we are tempted to ask ourselves, and Ralston himself provides an answer:
- 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.
With those four short sentences, Aron has defined his life up to the point when the boulder fell on his hand. And for better or for worse, it is the trauma and forced introspection caused by his accident that clicks the rest of his life into focus:
- 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 sequiter: "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.
- [...]
- I got defensive because I wanted him to respect me for my accomplishments. I had fallen prety 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.
An inflection point in his life as well as the story, the protagonist, facing adversity, looks within and finds something valuable -- his character.
Were this a fairy tale of sorts, here is where Aron would miraculously gain a burst of energy and cast the rock off, and in a convenient act of symbolism, his previous attitude on life as well. Alas but no, as he is only three days into his ordeal, and there are three yet to come. It's a long strange trip he's on, and he is most assuredly on the bus.
The following days are filled with despair, agony, misery, as he methodically tries one failed escape solution after another. He can sense the end is near even as he drinks his own urine to stave off the demons of dehydration. His life turns into a haze of hallucinations intertwingled with pain, and yet he still finds the composure to compose a last will and testament on his video camera and say heartfelt goodbyes to his friends and family.
We know how the story ends, of course, but to think of Aron Ralston's story as a mere tale of survival is to miss the point of why it resonated so with the public consciousness. It's because he met his challenge the way we want to meet our challenges. We look at his achievement without overlooking the process of his achievement. From the chutzpah of "retirement" at age 26, to the extreme resourcefulness of fending off hypothermia, fatigue, and dehydration, and yes, to the gritty perserverance of cutting off his own arm, we see the triumph of human spirit and are similarly inspired. We see the best aspects of ourselves staring back as we take in this tale. And we are comforted by knowing that it is indeed possible to prevail, even when trapped between a rock and a hard place.
