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 Guns N’ Roses concert-but I’ve never felt this level of sleep deprivation. It’s like a disease breaking down my higher brain functions, pushing me closer to the line of irrationality. Maybe it’s best that I can’t sleep, lest I drift away into hypothermia. I can’t sleep, but neither am I fully awake-this mental miasma has put me well on my way toward madness.
I remember a time I felt almost this way, descending the east bowl of Mount Princeton in the dark with my endurance-training mentor Theresa Daus-Weber during our first annual fourteeners bender in September 2002. We linked seven high peaks in forty-eight hours of continuous hiking, and were into the second night of the sixty-mile, 25,000-vertical-feet climbing spree when my sleep-weary mind lost its grip on reality.
I scampered across a two-mile-wide slanting boulder field ahead of Theresa. We each had a headlamp and a hiking pole to help us traverse the unstable terrain in the dark. I frequently lost sight of her behind me, since the rock flutings that featured the mountainside stood in my line of sight. Stopping to wait around each corner, I would sit and fall asleep for a moment, waking within twenty or thirty seconds to the sound of Theresa’s trekking pole tapping the rocks in sync with her stride. I would see the light of her headlamp bob up in my face as she approached, and then I’d stand up without a word and scramble off over the next few dozen boulders until I couldn’t see her anymore, then stop to repeat the cycle. Tick, tick, tick, her pole lightly striking the boulders. Flash, her headlamp shooting into my eyes, blinding me to the fact there was a person behind the light. Another wordless encounter, boulders zipping underfoot in the throw of my headlamp, then blessed rest.
Despite an hour and a half of movement, it never seemed like I made any progress toward the far side of the bowl, where we would intercept an access road at about 12,000 feet. Something was wrong. After the tenth or twelfth or fifteenth time I had replicated the scramble-doze-wake-tick-flash-scramble pattern, a surreal tug of insanity gave me the idea that each time I fell asleep, it reset my position on the mountainside to the same point in the middle of the boulder field. My body was somehow being transported mysteriously back uphill during my twenty-second naps, and I was reliving the same sequence over and over again.
Another five cycles, and I was sure of it: I was trapped in time, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Somebody was doing this to me. Theresa. I convinced myself that she had put a spell on me. I was helpless against her; the only way I could break her control was by staying awake. No matter what, I couldn’t help myself-when I stopped to wait for her, I dozed off instantly. The delusional paranoia was so strong that it never occurred to me to check my watch, to talk with Theresa, to create some variety to the experience, or to slow down and walk at her pace, thereby eliminating my opportunities to fall asleep. What did occur to me was to memorize the rocks I stepped on. If I could prove to myself that I wasn’t stepping on the same rocks, that would be undeniable evidence that it was all in my head. Therein I found another problem: I couldn’t remember the rocks, not even the ones I would lie on to rest.
We continued the downward traverse with my mind stuck on an infinite playback loop of rocks. After two hours, we exited the boulder field, and I told Theresa about my delusions. She told me that hallucinations are a predictable part of sleep-deprived ultra-hiking. It was nearly twenty-four hours later when I arrived at my truck, some thirty miles away, and I put an end to my delirium with a well-deserved night’s sleep.
Back in the canyon, the only preoccupation that alleviates the ceaseless BBC torture is pondering the question of whether I should or shouldn’t drink my urine. That subject is enough to drive everything else far into the mental background. The issue of taste doesn’t really concern me; it’s going to taste like piss, no matter what. The consideration is whether the urine will prolong my survival or bring on my demise. I speculate that by this point, my urine has a considerably elevated salt content, but I can’t know if the salinity is greater than that already present in my blood. If my urine has fewer salts than my blood, then it won’t be a problem. But at a higher concentration, it would be like drinking salt water, essentially accelerating my dehydration. I wonder, too, if the toxins and other potentially harmful contents are present at dangerous levels. This is the stuff my body is trying to get rid of, and here, I’m going to put it back in.
Sitting in front of me at eye level on top of the chockstone, my translucent blue CamelBak reservoir makes the liter of brackish orange urine look brown in the dim evening light. In the four hours since I peed into the container, the urine has separated into stratified layers: a viscous brown soup on the bottom, a dingy orange fluid in the middle, a clear golden liquid on top. A half-inch-thick accretion of yellow-white sediment collects on the liner bottom; more and more of the dregs fall out of the solution as the urine cools. I prod the CamelBak with my finger, disturbing the solids. It reminds me of the yeast in the bottom of a bottle of home-brewed beer. Of course, it’s substantially less appealing.
Night falls again, presaged by the routine increase in the up-canyon breeze and another invasion of mosquitoes. Why are they so active just before dark, I wonder, and then say aloud, “And where the hell are they coming from?” There must be standing water someplace in the canyon-I didn’t pass any on the way here, but maybe at the bottom of the Big Drop rappel. I think I remember something in the guidebook. I check my map. The photocopy is wearing thin along the crease lines, but I can still read the marking that calls out a pool below the rappel. It’s probably a pothole, a remnant of the last rainfall, like the greenish slime on the south wall behind my feet. In fact, my map indicates that there should have been a pool in the upcanyon section, and another where I am, but they have obviously evaporated. I hope there’s some kind of water supply still available at the rappel. I bet it dries up in the summer and winter, but the slime, the mosquitoes, and the gritty residue on the walls make me think there is water now. That will be very important if I get out of here-it’s the only source for four miles, until Barrier Creek appears in the bottom of Horseshoe Canyon, just beyond the Great Gallery.
You’re not getting out of here, Aron. You’ll never see water again.
Dark.
Cold.
Stars.
Space.
Shivering.
I return to the pattern of fidgeting and rest that helped me through last night, but I can get only ten minutes of stillness from each cycle. It seems colder tonight, or perhaps I’m feeling the increased effects of starvation and dehydration on my body’s metabolic systems. With the certain deterioration I’ve suffered since my entrapment began, I assume my body is not generating as much heat. The deeper cold increases my compulsion to retain every bit of heat possible. What else can I do to insulate myself? Unplugged from the CD player, the headphones around my neck haven’t produced music for three days. I pull them over my ears all the same, like half-sized ear-muffs. When I tuck my head inside the rope bag, I shut the zipper until it slides into the skin of my neck. With the bag so tightly closed around my face, I hope to benefit from my breath’s warmth, letting it warm my head and preheat my next inhalation without taking me too close to the brink of suffocation.
Breath after breath fills the rope bag with moist air as I focus on exhaling against the waterproof liner. Instead of letting my breath dissipate into the chilly night air, I try to recapture some of my body’s water content from the humidified exhalations. Using the rope bag like a breathing chamber seems like a sound theory, though I have no idea if it will help. I get the familiar sense that I’m prolonging the inevitable. After five or six minutes of breathing in the bag, the cold seeps up from my legs and arms into my core. Shuddering, I struggle to hold the position, sitting in my harness for another three or four minutes: left hand grabbing my right elbow, head nestled on my right biceps, knees bent into the rock shelf. But the shivers tear across me like attack dogs. I have to extract my head from the bag in order to fidget with the ropes around my legs and the coverings on my arms. I’m getting too efficient-rewrapping my leg coils takes only twenty minutes-and I have a more difficult time warming up between sit sessions. I don’t even bother to take up my knife and chip at the rock; I just suffer my misery and pray that I’ll live through the night.
Midnight. It’s now Tuesday, April 29. After hours of debating the issue with myself, I decide to take a sip of my urine. I still have nearly a half-cup of fresh water left, but I want to find out what the urine tastes like and whether I’ll be able to stomach it. With the CamelBak bite valve reattached to the tubing at the stub where I cut off the hose during my first attempt to fabricate a tourniquet, I suck two tablespoons of urine into my mouth and swallow it immediately. The night air has chilled it substantially from its initial 98 degree temperature, to maybe 60 degrees. The sharp saltiness is repugnantly tangy and bitter. My face wrinkles into a knot. Surprisingly, it’s not as horrible as it could be-I don’t gag or puke. My quagmire deepens. If the urine was so insufferably foul as to be undrinkable, I would have my answer-don’t drink it. But because it’s feasible that I could drink almost half of what I peed out before I get to the unfathomable brown filth, the question is still open. My thirst would have me drink two cups right now. That doesn’t seem like a good idea, though. I think I’ve heard of people undertaking some cleansing dietary program that encourages you to drink your urine, but I have to assume that you stay well hydrated at the same time. Maybe that memory is a figment-I can barely trust my brain with anything at this point-but clear pee would definitely be a better alternative than what I have available. In the end, I don’t know if I should drink any more of the urine, and there’s no way for me to accurately guess. I suspect it will be worth the gamble, but not yet. I’m going to keep sipping my water for the next twelve hours, until it runs out, and then I’ll think about drinking my urine again.
More cycles. Three A.M., Tuesday morning, hour sixty. I mark my time trapped here at two and a half days. I’ve adjusted my sipping schedule to fit the shorter cycle duration. I delicately draw my water bottle from its perch and note the amount remaining: a scant three ounces. Holding the bottle between my legs, I unscrew the top with my free left hand. I hold the lid back, raise the bottle, and before I fully wet the inside of my lower lip, I force my hand to withdraw and put the bottle down, as I have done once an hour through the night.
The last mouthful of my water supply has become a sacred element. In effect, the liquid has transubstantiated from something of this earth to something holy and eternal-it has become time itself, and in time, it has become life. The longer that water lasts, the longer I will last.
Or so I tell myself. I’ve developed several signs that tell me dehydration has already set upon me, and even if I conserve my last water, I’ll still die fairly soon. My body no longer has enough fluids to perform at an optimum level. My eyes are sunken and dry-I avoid looking at myself in my video-camera episodes because of the gaunt stretch of skin over my cheekbones. The desert air contributes its irritants to my contact lenses, but my eyes can’t flush the contaminants. As the dehydration has stressed my heart muscles, my heartbeat has become weak, sometimes erratic, and fast-I time it at a resting rate of 120 beats per minute, over 60 percent faster than normal for me. Despite my elevated heart rate, my circulation has slowed over the last three days as my blood has thickened, inhibiting the delivery of nutrients to my organs and the removal of metabolic wastes. My pump is burning up as the fluid it’s trying to move solidifies in my body’s internal piping. With my blood pressure steadily dropping, my body temperature fluctuates unnaturally, and the slightest breeze sends me into another shivering fit. Drastically losing liquid mass, my organs suffer the brunt of the dehydration; in all, my body is losing between four and five pounds a day. The skin on the back of my hand has shriveled into reptilian crinkles; the poor elasticity allows me to form little tents by plucking at my skin with my teeth.
But for all the physical signs of my body’s dire need for hydration, nothing, nothing compares to the anguish of my thirst: unslakable…unquenchable…unsatisfiable…insuppressible…inextinguishable.
I find myself wishing to get this all over with simply to bring relief to the thirst. As my end comes, it will be in cardiovascular collapse, but I wonder if the thirst won’t take care of the job first.
Two hours later, it is five A.M., and time for my hourly water ritual. I place the water bottle in my crotch and again single-handedly unscrew the lid. I ease my legs’ grip on the bottle and begin to raise it to my mouth. But the lid unexpectedly snags on my harness, and the bottle slips, falling to my lap. My sluggish brain responds too slowly for my hand to catch the bottle before it tilts almost horizontal, and a splash of the sacrament darkens my tan shorts, turning the red dust to a patina of shining mud.
Fuck a nut, Aron. Pay attention! Look what you did!
Water is time. With that spill, how many hours did I just lose? Maybe six hours, maybe ten hours, maybe half a day? The mistake hits my morale like a train, destroying my protective walls of discipline and meticulousness that had been keeping despair at bay. Regardless of what I thought earlier, losing half of my remaining supply of water makes me realize how psychologically attached to it I am. Even if I have so little water left that, physiologically speaking, I might as well not have any, emotionally, I feel like I’ve given away half of the rest of my life.
I have been shivering in my wrappings, with my head in my rope bag, trying to push away the nagging cold, when I hear a shout in my sleep-deprived brain. It is just after six-fifteen A.M., Tuesday.
“Larry!” My mom yells out my dad’s name. I see her in her bathrobe, bolting downstairs from their bedroom to tell my dad some terrible news she has just received. The image ends before I see her reach my dad. Different from a memory or a dream, the clip was more like a TV set involuntarily switched on in my mind, broadcasting from my parents’ house. Was it something that already happened? Or a premonition of something yet to come? Either way, I’m fairly sure that I am the reason my mom was rushing to my dad. But was it to say she found out I’m in trouble, or that I’m found, or that I’m dead? It could have been anything.
Gradually, light resurrects the dimensions of the canyon, and I feel buoyed by the knowledge that I’ve survived another night. Now that there’s enough visibility, I decide to update the record of my situation with another round of talking to my video camera.
Wiping at my left eye, I smear my hand across my brow and face, then sigh. I check the framing to make sure I’m at least partially on-screen, but I avoid looking at the camera as I talk.
“It’s six-forty-five in the morning on Tuesday morning,” I repeat to myself.
“I figure by now that Leona has missed me, hopefully, since I didn’t show up at the party last night. Another hour and a half, they’ll miss me for not showing up for work. I keep thinking about it. My best-case scenario is that maybe they notify the police, and they put ’em on a twenty-four-hour hold to officially file a report, a missing person’s report. Which makes it, like, maybe noon tomorrow that it even gets official that I’m gone.”
My frustration mounts, and I’m on the verge of tearing up. “Goddamn. It’s really sinking in, how dumb this is. So many things about it. So many things. It’s gonna be a really long time before anyone gets to me. I was thinking about it more and more. They’re gonna have to pneumatic-drill this rock to pieces or amputate my arm just to get me out of here. That’s when somebody finds me and then goes to get the proper tools. And then it’s a haul up over two considerable staircases to get out to a helicopter landing zone, and then it’s an hour flight to Grand Junction, maybe less than that. Maybe it’s a half hour. Whatever.”
Imagining a team hauling a pneumatic jackhammer down Blue John Canyon to break the rock apart with me still stuck under it makes the idea of rescue seem even more improbable than before. Just getting me free will be a tremendous task, and evacuating me in a litter out of the slot…The space is so confined, I’m not sure there’s a feasible route to use.
The logistics nightmare overloads my hope. I know it’s all theoretical, but even in theory, it sounds like a multi-day ordeal once I’m located. Moving a subject in a litter a hundred yards down a wide road grade takes five minutes with six people. Make it a narrowing winding trail, and it could be a half hour of effort. As soon as there’s a haul or lowering system involved, it adds an hour or two, and that’s with ideal conditions. Each level of complexity adds time and resource demands and elevates the risk to the rescuers. For me, each one of those chockstones I crawled over or under represents a diminished likelihood that I would survive the time it would take to evacuate my useless body. If I’m alive when a rescue team finds me, I will probably die before reaching definitive medical care. Realizing it doesn’t matter-I’ll be dead before searchers get to this part of the canyon, anyway-I close my left eye in an unconscious grimacing wink and continue with the videoing. I’m exasperated.
“I tried…I tried cutting my arm off. I couldn’t even barely break the skin with this stupid knife. I tried a couple different blades, but all I did was just mark myself up. I could barely even get any blood to draw, it’s probably so thick at this point.
“I do still have the tiniest bit of water left. Well, actually, I’ve resorted…I’ve had a couple pretty good sips of my own urine that I saved in my CamelBak. I sorta let it distill. The sediment separated from the more liquidy stuff.”
Emphasizing each word, I elaborate, “It tastes like hell,” and pause, smacking my lips apart when I try to swallow. “I have about a bite of burrito left that I can barely stomach anyways.
“I tried moving the rock some more. It’s not going anywhere.
“So it’s been not quite seventy hours since I left on my bike from Horseshoe Trailhead, during which time I have consumed three liters of water and a couple mouthfuls of piss. Food I’m not so worried about, although I am getting too tired to the point of doing anything. I can’t even chip away at the rock anymore. It’s…I tried, and I don’t have the energy and the gumption…It’s ridiculous.”
Disgusted with my impotence, I shudder and then moan, “Unaaannggh.” Shaking my head, I frown and grimace, then compose myself during a long blink and look straight at the camera for what I want to say next.
“Mom, Dad, I really love you guys. I wanted to take this time to say the times we’ve spent together have been awesome. I haven’t appreciated you in my own heart the way I know I could. Mom, I love you. Thank you so much for coming to visit me in Aspen. Dad, thank you for the time last year when we went on your trip with the Golden Leaf Tour. Those were some of my favorite times that I’ve had with you in a long, long time. Thank you both for being understanding, and supportive, and encouraging during this last year. I really have lived this last year. I wish I had learned some lessons more astutely, more rapidly, than what it took to learn. I love you. I’ll always be with you.”
Tightening my lips, I feel tears welling in my eyes. I bow my head in another long blink, then give the camera a nod, as though I’m saying goodbye, before I reach to pause the tape. A doleful breeze interjects itself in the canyon; the night’s calm is at an end. When I restart the video camera, my thoughts turn to my sister and the cloud of sorrow that will cast a shadow over her graduation and wedding this summer.
“I wanted to say to Sonja and Zack that I really wish you the best in your upcoming life together. You guys are great together. Sonja, you’ve got a great career in front of you. I know you guys are gonna both be very happy. I wish I could be there to see it start off. You’ll graduate about a month from now. Do great things with your life-that will honor me the best. Thanks.”
It makes me happy to think about my sister. Even though I got good grades in school, she came along and one-upped me in every arena, and I love her for it. She cares about learning-she’s planning to be a volunteer teacher. I’m glad for her, but I’m also glad for me. It’s as though Sonja will repay the educational debt I’ve accrued by having taken from the system without giving back. I’m more proud of what she’s done in college than of what I’ve done since I graduated six years ago. Even with me gone, big things will happen in our family because of her; it reassures me to know she has such aspirations.
Another breeze passes up from the unseen recesses of the canyon behind me, making me worry about a change in the weather. I can already discern a sheet of clouds thicker than any I’ve yet seen. No sign of thunderheads, but I wouldn’t necessarily see them before they unleashed a flash flood. I’d forgotten about that risk. While I’ve got the camera out, I decide to record a few more video notes in case the rains come. I start the tape again, panning up to the debris over my head.
“It’s also occurred to me that the flash-flood potential is still present. This stuff all up above me there, it’s all been put there…The rocks I pulled down on top of me, it was all put there by floods. There’s four pretty major canyons upstream from me that all converge in this three-foot-wide gap where I am. Even if I’m dead at that point, it’s gonna…it’s gonna fuck things up pretty bad. This footage will be unviewable, and my body will be pretty mangled. That’s really not here or there. I was almost wishing for it to come. In the one sense that maybe I could get a little bit of water. I don’t know if that sounds ridiculous or not, but I was thinking about it last night. I guess at the point where you’re sipping on your bodily waste products…I know I shouldn’t be doing it. It’s got too many salts and stuff in it, it’s just gonna hasten the process.
“Three days, I’ve been out of water for a day and a half. That probably means I’ve got another day and a half. I’m gonna hold strong. But if I even see Wednesday noon, I’ll be amazed.”
I stop the tape. Those are tough words. Verbalizing that I’m giving myself thirty more hours to live leaves me with a sense of finality that rubs my psyche the wrong way. I put the video recorder up on the chockstone, and my body involuntarily slumps back into the harness. The words echo and rebound inside my head-“if I even see Wednesday”-until they hit a synapse holding on to a store of gumption. The next thing I know, I’m stripping webbing off my right arm and tying the purple strands into Prusik loops once again. With the practice I had yesterday, I set up the 6:1 haul-system rigging in a fraction of the time it took me to figure it out the first time, clipping the rope tied to the chockstone through the carabiners and configuring the Prusiks with a single-handed dexterity that impresses my sluggish brain. My fumbling through the night left me thinking my coordination had dried up. Stashing my water bottle, urine supply, knife, and cameras in my backpack, I clear the top of the chockstone, lastly putting my scratched sunglasses on top of my head.
“Ready for liftoff,” I say to myself after double-checking the Prusiks to make sure they will lock off in the proper direction. Positioned just above my waist, the foot loops are a little higher than they were yesterday-I must have used a bit more rope in the system this time-but I mount the lower one first with my left foot and step up into the right one.
OK, now move the boulder, Aron. Do it. Bounce. Harder. Pull on the rope-yank on it. Bounce and yank. Harder! You’ve got to do this. Make it move!
Grunting, flailing, heaving, I bounce my weight in the stirrups and pull on the haul line. “Come on, move, dammit!”
Nothing. I am completely powerless against the mass of this stone and the friction of these walls. My feet pull themselves from the foot loops, as if they have a mind of their own that already knows I won’t be giving it another go. I am defeated again. There is nothing left for me to cling to. I am violently drowning in this Gothic isolation; the more I fight it, the tighter it closes in, squeezing the life from me. Resting for fifteen minutes, I feel like crying, but my dry sobs don’t produce anything. It’s as though I’m too dejected even to waste my energy on tears. What good could it do me to cry? It would squander what little liquid my body has left.
Slowly, I become aware of the cold stare of my knife from inside my backpack. There is a reason for everything, including why I brought that knife with me, and suddenly, I know what I am about to do. Mustering up my courage, I dismantle a purple Prusik loop from the rigging and tie it around my biceps, preparing the rest of my tourniquet as I’d refined it yesterday-CamelBak tubing insulation wrapped twice around my forearm, knotted twice and clipped with a ’biner that I twist six times and attach to the purple webbing to secure it.
I note the time with a glance at my watch on the backpack strap at my knees: 7:58 A.M.
Folding open the shorter of the two knives, I close the handle and grasp it in my fist, the blade jutting out from below my pinky finger. Raising the tool above my right arm, I pick a spot on the top of my forearm, next to a freckle and just up from the marks I scratched into my skin yesterday morning. I hesitate, jerking my left hand to a halt a foot above my target. I recock my tool, and before I can stop myself a second time, my fist violently thrusts the inch-and-a-half-long blade down, burying it to the hilt in the meat of my forearm.
“Holy crap, Aron, what did you just do?”
My vision warps with astonishment. The light quality in the canyon bursts into beige contrast, highlights becoming bright pale tan and shadows changing to deep brown as if I’ve crossed over into a sepia-toned movie. I bend my head to my arm, and my surroundings leave hallucinogenic trails behind them, responding unhurriedly to my movements, as though this pseudo-film is being played at two-thirds normal speed. I was half expecting the knife to glance off my arm, but when I relax my grip, I can see the folded handle of the multi-tool thrust perpendicular into my arm. Yesterday it didn’t seem possible that my knife could ever get through my skin, but it did. When I grasp the tool more firmly and wiggle it slightly, the blade connects with something hard, my upper forearm bone. I tap the knife down and feel it knocking on my radius.
Whoa. That’s so bizarre.
All at once, I am curious. There is barely any discernible sensation of the blade below skin level. My nerves seem to be concentrated in the outer layers of my arm. I confirm this by drawing the knife out, slicing up at my skin from underneath. Oh yeah, there they are. The flesh stretches with the blade, broadcasting signals through my arm as I open an inch-wide hole at the site. Letting the pain dissipate, I note that there is remarkably little blood coming from the torn cells in my skin; the capillaries must have closed down for the time being. Fascinated, I poke at the gash with the tool. Ouch. Pushing the knife back into the gory hole, I probe at the inner constitution of my arm. The epidermis is twice as thick as I thought it would be, and leathery-tough. Yellow fatty tissue lies under my skin in a membrane layer around my muscle. When I root around, my view disappears as burgundy-colored blood seeps into the wound. I tap at the bone again, feeling the vibration of each strike through my left thumb and forefinger. Even damped by surrounding tissues, the hollow thumping of the blade tip against my upper forearm bone resonates up into my elbow. The soft thock-thock-thock tells me I have reached the end of this experiment. I cannot cut into or through my forearm bones.
Pushing aside that bleak conclusion for a moment, I find some levity in my situation-it’s the first time in thirteen years that I have carried out a dissection, and I’m handling it much better this time around, even though it’s my own arm. I recall the sheep’s eyeball that stared back at me from the stainless-steel pan in ninth-grade physical science class. Cutting into the squishy orb was enough to intimidate me right out of the biology program in high school; thereafter, I stuck with chemistry and physics-anything to avoid animal parts in a nonculinary setting. That eyeball was indirectly responsible for my chosen path in engineering. It’s odd that I’ve come back to face such an old and rooted fear in this canyon.
Sweating from the adrenaline, I set my multi-tool on top of the chockstone and pick up my water bottle. It’s not time for my next sip, but I’ve earned this. As the first drops splash against my lip, I open my eyes and stare into the opaque blue bottom with detachment. I continue to tilt the bottle up and up, feeling a mix of deserved reward and recalcitrant spite-like I’m doing something naughty but I don’t care; I’m going to do it, and the fact that I shouldn’t makes me enjoy it even more.
Just do it-get it over with. It doesn’t matter.
Each continued tablespoon of water satisfies me like a whole mouthful, and instantly, I’m gulping at the dribbling flow. I close my eyes…Oh, God. After an all too brief three seconds, I swallow the last drops of my clean water supply, and it’s gone. My body wails for the water to keep coming, but there is no more. I gaze into the container poised over the bridge of my nose and shake the Nalgene, tearing free those last drops from the walls of the bottle.
Well, that’s it, there’s not a single drop left. I don’t linger on it. Screwing the lid back on the threaded lip, I realize I’ve passed a moment I’ve been anticipating for three days. Now it’s over. There’s one less thing I have to worry about. I decide to disengage the tourniquet-it’s making my whole arm ache, and since I won’t be going any further with the amputation, there’s no need to cause any excess agony. I unclip the carabiner holding the neoprene tubing and slowly unwind it, allowing my arm to regain its regular shape. At a snail’s pace, my circulation returns to my arm, and I keep watch on the wound. There is no increase in the blood flow at the gash, and no pulsing at all, so I figure I have avoided any arteries. Still, the bleeding is less than I would have expected. It almost seems like the tourniquet wasn’t doing anything. I make the connection that since the chockstone has pinched off the arteries and veins in my hand, it has reduced the blood flow in my arm. That would explain why my forearm is stone cold.
Pulling out the video camera, I hold it in my hand this time and begin taping the results of my surgery. My hat, webbing, and tourniquet supplies appear in the screen, on top of the chockstone.
“This next part may not be for all viewers at home. It’s a little after eight. At precisely eight o’clock I took my last sip of clean water…and…hide your eyes, Mom…”
Panning across the boulder, the camera comes to my arm and the gaping wound, smattered with bright red blood. My breathing becomes labored as I look at the puncture in my arm.
“I made an attempt-a short career in surgery, as it turned out-those knives are just not anywhere close to the task. I’ve got about an inch-wide gash in my arm that goes about a half inch deep. I cut down through the skin and the fatty tissue, and through some of the muscle. I think I cut a tendon, but I’m not sure. I tried, anyways. It really just didn’t go well. The tourniquet is relaxed at this point. Which actually is a little bothersome, considering I’m not bleeding that bad, barely at all. It’s so weird. You’d expect to definitely see more pulsing and bleeding, but oh well.
“I’m really fucked now. I’m out of water.”
I stop the tape, more depressed than ever. With an open wound, I’ve introduced a new contestant in the competition to see what will kill me first-dehydration, hypothermia, a flash flood, toxins from my crushed hand, or the infection that is likely breeding in my arm at this very moment.
Stabbing yourself with a contaminated knife-that was true genius, Aron.
Surmising that the bleeding at the gash site isn’t going to get any worse, I decide to cover the wound to keep the dirt, grit, and insects off it. Delicately pinching the bottom of my salmon-colored Phish tour T-shirt between my ring and pinky fingers and the palm of my left hand, I pierce the fabric with my knife, held between my thumb and forefinger. From the hole, I rip a strip of the cotton shirt from in front of my waist and wrap it three times around my forearm. There now. I have a bandage on the puncture site.
In a rush of noise, the raven’s wings swat at the air seventy feet over my head-once, and twice, as it attains cruising altitude, flying its morning search route. I glance at my watch. 8:31 A.M. The bird is fifteen minutes late this morning.
The canyon behind me begins to glow in a spectrum of pastel reds as the sun breaches the depths of the upper walls. Knowing that the sun will be more punctual than the raven, I get my video camera out of my rucksack for the third time this morning, anticipating my matinal sun salute. I videotape myself stretching my leg into the dagger of sunlight as it creeps closer to me. Before the sunshine veers up the north wall, I pan the camera from the view of the bright pink and carroty-orange undulations twenty yards downcanyon, to my calf absorbing the precious warmth of my only direct sunlight.
“It’s so pretty back there. For a…about twenty minutes, it’s actually possible for me to get a little direct sun on my leg if I try really hard.”
Like a prisoner with a pretty view beyond the bars of his cell window, I’m not sure whether the beauty of the canyon in the morning light inspires my tenacity or erodes my resolve. I yearn even more for freedom.
With the tape paused, my thoughts radiate out from the canyon to my friends all over the United States, readying for another workday. I wonder if any of them are thinking about me. I highly doubt the alert of my absence has gone any further than the upstairs office at the Ute Mountaineer, but at least somebody knows for sure that I am officially overdue. Theoretically, my manager is at least wondering what has happened to me, if not actively searching. I begin reminiscing about my friends, our favorite trips, and the places we have experienced together. For being just twenty-seven, I feel like I’ve had the adventures of someone twice my age, and the fortune to have had so many caring and fun people share their time with me on trips, at concerts, and in the outdoors. Thinking about my family and friends makes me smile. Memories bring me a tidal change of morale, absolving me of my preoccupation with the agony of my crushed wrist under this boulder. My mood shifts from one of speculation on the dim hopes of my rescue to a highlights reel of my life. This uplift is something I definitely want to record on the video. I wonder if my friends will get to watch it at my funeral, and that morose thought actually makes me happier-I can picture a church full of my friends in black, watching what I’m about to say on a big-screen television positioned near the altar. Getting ready, I adjust my hat, clear my throat, and try to swallow, which makes my lips smack at the dryness of my mouth.
“I was thinking about what I was talking about earlier, about my regrets about not focusing on the people enough. And I don’t know. I was thinking maybe that’s not totally true.
“I was thinking about some of my favorite trips that I’ve done with some of my favorite folks. Erik and Jon, going to Winter Park during those Jazz Fest trips, and everything from building the Dr Pepper can stacks on top of the refrigerator, to sticking noodles on the ceiling, to watching television late into the night and getting so jazzed up on sugar and caffeine, man, just having a fun time. Making those heinous-they were really good-peanut-butter sandwiches with honey. Jon, when we climbed Longs Peak, our first fourteener together, and that road trip we did last year out through the East Coast, so many states, just buzzing around. That was really fun, to be out there with you and Chrystie. Seeing you guys put your life together there, building it, that’s really cool.
“Erik, I was remembering many times about Maui with Matt and Brent. That was such a fun week. So many good trips to see String Cheese shows, like down at the Wiltern Theatre, and that whole run when we did most of that Winter Carnival two years ago. When we went to Jazz Fest with KPat. Oh my gosh. I’ve never been so belligerently wasted at eight in the morning as when we were sitting on that boardwalk by the Mississippi River. Man, it was crazy-going back to sit in the hot tub, getting up a couple hours later to go do it all again, five days in a row. Amazing.”
I squint in a smile. Images come to me of that wild week in New Orleans when we saw twenty full-bore concerts in five days on an average of three hours of sleep-usually between nine in the morning and noon. By the end of it, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep on a N’Awlins barroom floor in the middle of a beer-swilling crowd while one of the bands was in the throes of a second set. You’ll never find your limits until you’ve gone too far.
“I was thinking about a trip I did with Erik Zsemlye and Rana-I’m thinking about you-when we went up to Denver from Albuquerque and we opened the windows up in a storm and this whiteout blizzard came into the car and it was a whiteout in the vehicle as we were driving up toward Antonito. How beautiful Rana looked in her snow-ice-princess costume.
“Sonja, I was remembering the trip to Washington, D.C., and the high-point trips that we did that time. When we went down to Havasupai and I fell off a cliff into a cactus and I almost drowned in the Colorado River. I was thinking about another time with Jean-Marc and Chad in Phoenix, we went down to Mexico and Margaritavilled our butts off, sailed around the horn down at Rocky Point and back after loading up on Coronas and tequila on the beach. Jamie, when you and I went to Havasupai-that was beautiful. Down at the camp, it was so awesome, waking up together on New Year’s morning. Wow.”
Laughing a laugh of utter exhaustion, I recall the irony of the memories that involved a close brush with death. I’ve listed several times when I almost died as some of my favorite memories, times when I had fun via the intensity of the experience. Regardless of the psychological implications, I find a certain comedic relief for my current situation, wondering if I’ll feel the same way if I survive my entrapment in Blue John.
“It goes without saying, all the fantastic trips I’ve done with my family, but Dad, you and I have done some special ones to see Gettysburg, the history of Virginia and Pennsylvania, we did that one back in college. The first time we went to Canyonlands, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, all these places that draw me back to the desert each time. Thanks for those. So many special times with great people in my life.”
I shake my head in amazement at my fortune. My memories overrun my ability to keep them sorted, connected, or ordered, and they begin tumbling out in chaotic ramblings.
“I was thinking, too, Erik, that first road trip to see music when we went to see the Grateful Dead over Fourth of July weekend in 1995.
“Gary Scott, our trip up Denali-that was the whole catalyst for me leaving my job. Thanks. Good luck on Everest, man. I know you’re up there high right now, probably Camp Three or so. Be safe, come back.
“I was thinking, too, about when Judson came up from Phoenix to climb Mount Rainier together in this blitzkrieg event. Taking a nap on the Disappointment Cleaver at twelve thousand five hundred feet, at three o’clock in the afternoon after summiting, when we started at two in the morning. ‘Five more minutes to Camp Muir!’ And it wasn’t.”
My smile grows even wider. Judson kept asking me how much farther the milestone camp was; I could see where we were going, but the moonlit night distorted my sense of distance, and I made earnest prediction after earnest prediction that we would be at the huts in fifteen more minutes, then five more minutes, until, after a dozen estimates of “five more minutes,” we finally tromped into camp just in time for sunrise. I was lucky Judson didn’t drop me in a crevasse for my lousy guessing.
“I was remembering, Chip, when you and I drove to Flagstaff and back for Keller Williams. That was another blitzkrieg. Oh, man, so many incredible times. Places I went with my friend Erik Kemnitz-to his house in Rochester one weekend in college. When I went out to California a couple times and met up with Soha and Craig and Buck, I think I even got a couple of you guys to your first Phish show.”
I’m feeling my tiredness delaying my efforts to speak coherently. Simply being awake seems to be fully taxing my brainpower. I need rest, but I can’t sleep. Bracing my left elbow against the southern canyon wall, I hold my head up with my hand and continue.
“Bryan Long, that one we did last year. Mountain biking and hiking and hot springs, then two Cheese shows, and another two Cheese shows. Zach, thanks for being my friend, we got to go hiking up on Sandia Peak with Erik that day. Ahhh, fun. I do appreciate all those times, so many good folks in my life. Rana, our trip to Telluride to see the Cheese. That was my best ‘last day’ ever, skiing in the full-blown pigtails, tie-dye shirt, pink fluorescent boa, our flags flying high that day.”
My smile is cracking my dry lips. I need some lip balm, but I’ll wait to get to it in a minute. Even the pain of my lips makes me feel thankful for the people I love.
“So thanks, everybody. Thanks for the good times. I do appreciate each and every one of you. Norm and Sandy, you guys are like my folks away from home. All my friends’ parents, too, for bringing up such wonderful people who have participated in my life, thank you. My friends in Aspen that I got to stay with over the last six months, beautiful, beautiful people, all of you, thank you. Bryan and Jenn Welker, Bryan Gonzales and Mike Check, thanks. Rachel, you’re a wonderful woman, thank you. I could say the same thing about a lot of people in my life. Thankfully, I’m getting to say it now. I love you all. Hugs.”
Wow. How good do I feel now? I wonder if this is a bit like my life flashing before my eyes, but on a slower time line. What makes the human brain respond to death with reflection? I always figured people saw images of their family as a way of saying goodbye, but considering what the memories have done for me-giving me a surge of positive energy, smiling, feeling happy-I ruminate over an ulterior purpose. Perhaps the whole life’s highlights reel thing is a survival instinct, something engrained in our subconscious, the brain’s final trick in the bag to continue its own existence. I imagine that once adrenaline has failed to engage a successful fight-or-flight impulse, the flash of memories acts as a secondary reflex, motivating us to keep fighting even when we don’t think there’s any fight left in us. In the face of an imminent demise, the medulla oblongata kicks into involuntary overdrive and says, “You think you’re done? How about all those people who care about you? How about all those people you care about?” and bam! you’ve got a little more spunk. Maybe that’s why suicide seems most tempting when you don’t have people telling you they love you, or when you don’t care if they do-there is no flash, the backup system fails. Maybe that’s why our brains store memories in the first place, to spur on a stubborn body when the endgame has begun. Well, whatever. I’ll take the happiness and uplift and leave the psychobabble. I feel good, that’s the important thing.
Come noon, I am biding my death, shackled to the canyon wall. With so much practice sitting in my harness, I have found the most comfortable angle for my knees, the best height for my daisy chain, and the perfect edge location for the rope coiled like a pad in front of my shins. I have taken care of my body to the best of my faculties with the available resources. Strangely, I have to pee again. I decide I will decant my current stash before I unzip, but pouring off the clearer top part of the liquid in my CamelBak will be quite the coordination challenge. I grip my empty Nalgene between my thighs and hold it steady while I bite the upper end of the blue CamelBak water bag in my teeth. I keep the reservoir tilted, one bottom corner lower than the other, and the sediment settles off to one side of the outlet. I pinch the bite valve with my fingers, slowly letting the liquid run out into the Nalgene as the salt silt stays behind. With only the dregs left in my CamelBak, I close the Nalgene lid, set it on the chockstone, and dump out the leftovers from the blue reservoir into the sand behind my feet. Ewww. That shit stinks.
Good, that means you got rid of the worst of it.
I pee into the CamelBak and close the lid tight, setting it back onto the chockstone next to the Nalgene. This fluid is the darkest yet, pungent and warm. I’ll let it cool off and settle before I decant it again-the taste isn’t so ripe when it’s colder.
At about one-thirty Tuesday afternoon, I decide to pray once more. This time, I already have my answer as to what I should do. There’s only one thing left-wait for death or rescue, more likely the former. So instead of asking for guidance or direction, I ask for patience.
“God, it’s Aron again. I still need your help. It’s getting bad here. I’m out of water and food. I know I’m going to die soon, but I want to go naturally. I’ve decided that regardless of what I might go through, I don’t want to take my own life. It occurred to me that I could, but that’s not the way I want to go. As it is, I don’t figure I’ll live another day-it’s been three days already-I don’t figure I’ll see Wednesday noon. But please, God, grant me the steadfastness not to do anything against my being.”
I am going to see this through, whichever way it ends.
The third twenty-four-hour period of my entrapment is done. There is no water left to conserve, no potentially liberating trial left to complete. At three P.M., with nothing left to decide, my existence comes down to this: Take care of myself as best I can, physically and mentally. Physically, there is nothing I need to do until nightfall-the afternoon is the warmest time, so my only need is to adjust my body position to keep my circulation somewhat active.
The lack of demands from my body leaves nearly my full attention on sustaining my mind. Without sleep, external stimuli barely seem real, and some of them aren’t. I’ve heard voices twice more since I solved the mystery of the kangaroo rat’s nest, but they weren’t real sounds, just fabrications that my brain conjured to fill the audio void of the canyon. There is only the thinnest thread connecting my conscious thoughts with reliable reason. I’m wary that something will slip past and trick me into a rash or dangerous decision. Time passes most quickly when I am recounting memories. I return again and again to them. I realize I’ve left out a very close friend from the videotape; it’s time once more for filming.
My labored, shallow breathing resounds in the canyon. I try to settle it before I begin, but it forces me to pause every few words. Fatigue has overcome my neck muscles, and I have to prop my head with my left hand, as I did before.
“Continuing with the theme. I was thinking about Mark Van Eeckhout, all the great times we’ve had together. Back from our trip to Aravaipa, driving out there when I sat in the back of your truck, listening to cheesy eighties music with Angie. To when we skied little Williams Peak near Flagstaff. And our big-powder day at Wolf Creek, still one of the greatest days ever in my skiing life. All the great days at Pajarito together and coming up to visit in Los Alamos, and mountain biking, and climbing. To getting out on Baldy, my first backcountry trip. All the trips we did with Patchett over those Labor Days, man, so many great times there. Four Labor Days in a row, I think, we made it out. I loved every one of them. Vestal Peak and that trip up Wham Ridge, Pigeon the next year, Jagged the year after that, Dallas the year after that. Man, some of my favorite mountain trips there with you guys. Oh, wow.”
My exhausted smile allows a soft moan to slip out of my mouth. After a pause, I change tack, remembering a few of my financial holdings that my family will likely have to sort through.
“Logistics for a second. I’ve got stocks with CompuServe, UBS PaineWebber, the briefcases under my clothes rack in Aspen have the information about the stocks. I got rid of the Delphi stock, still have the GM stock. Those can go for Sonja or Mom and Dad, if you have another use for them. For the search-and-rescue folks who do execute the body recovery, it’d be appropriate to give them a donation for their efforts, too.”
I feel good that I’ve covered just about all the bases to make it easier for my parents to close out what small estate I have. But really, what is on my mind is food and drink. Chilled, succulent nectars, fruits, cold desserts, all things moist and yummy.
“Man, I can’t stop thinking about grapefruit juice, a margarita, or an OJ, or a Popsicle, all these great things I’d love to have. An orange, a tangerine. Oh, I can’t think about that stuff.
“I’m thinking that in the best of all possible situations that someone’s gotten ahold of Mom and Dad by now, that you guys are at least aware I’m missing, um, yeah, I don’t know.”
I want my parents to know that when they found out I was missing, I was still alive.
About forty minutes later, before four o’clock, I remove the final bite of my last convenience-store burrito from its plastic wrapper. The pale white flour tortilla has desiccated around the softer bean interior. Moist it is not. The bite I had at noon was cardboard, primed to absorb any remaining fluids from my body. Once again, I debate the merits of my next action. Will the last chunk dry me up more than it will provide sustenance? I don’t know. I do know I’m hungry. The wrapper’s nutritional information tells me I have eaten a total of five hundred calories in the two burritos over the last seventy-two hours, and I guess I have about fifty calories left in this last bite. When I’m active, I eat twice the recommended daily average of food, between four and five thousand calories a day. Going since Saturday without substantial food, my body is consuming itself to make up the difference. As little as I have left, it won’t matter much if I do or don’t eat the burrito, but it will put something in my stomach.
I pop the dried-out bite of burrito in my mouth and chew on it for twenty seconds, then take a sip of urine from my Nalgene to soften the mash. Ugh, it’s nasty. I grimace as I chew for another ten seconds, then swallow the disgusting mess, chasing it with another bitter swallow of urine. I should have dipped the bite in the urine and used what saliva I had left to swallow it; it might have saved me from that extra swallow of piss at the end. No matter, I won’t have to go through that again, because now I’m out of food. I’ve licked and relicked my candy-bar wrappers, scavenged for crumbs from my muffin bag, and polished off the burritos. That’s it. I’m on the urine diet now.
Returning to the video camera, I figure I’ll occupy myself a bit more and document that I just finished my food. Taking several long blinks, I film myself speaking very slowly, with long pauses between each sentence. I notice my voice is getting higher and wonder if that’s because of the dehydration tightening my vocal cords.
“Tuesday at four o’clock. It’s about sixty-five, sixty-six degrees out. Just running through the numbers again in my head. There’s very little hope for this kid. I just tried to eat my last bite of burrito and had to wash it down with a slurp of the top part of the bottle of urine, anyways. It seems to leave the denser part at the bottom, but it’s no Slurpee. I could use one of those. I didn’t want to sign off without saying ‘I love you’ to Grandma and Grandpa-both pairs, Anderson and Ralston. Grandpas, I’ll be seeing you soon here. Grandmas, I love you both, proud matriarchs. All my relatives in Ohio, I love you. I’m privileged to be a part of this family.”
I long to see my family again, but I know I’ve entered the protractedly dismal final countdown to my death. This is going to be a hard night.