Aron Ralston - Between a Rock and a Hard Place

A vivid memory from a movie of a heroin user shooting up, with a length of surgical tubing wrapped around his arm, gives me the idea to experiment with a tourniquet of tubing from my empty CamelBak. I cut the tubing free from the reservoir and manage to tie it in a simple knot around my upper forearm, just below the elbow. The placement comes to me without consideration of the pressure points nearer my biceps. I’m thinking I will have to twist the tubing so tightly that it will permanently damage part of my arm; therefore, I should put it as close to the cutting site as possible. The knot in the tubing is loose, and I can’t cinch it down even after redoing it three times: The plastic material is too stiff to allow a small knot that would stay snug around my arm. I look around for a stick to put in the tourniquet, but there aren’t any thick enough for my needs. To tighten the tubing will require a force that would snap any stick I can reach.

So much for that idea.

I have a piece of purple webbing knotted in a loop that I untie and wrap around my forearm. A five-minute effort yields a doubled knot, but the loops are too loose to stop my circulation. Again, I need a stick…or I can use a carabiner and twist the loops tighter with that. I clip the gate of my last unused carabiner through the loops and rotate it twice. The webbing presses deeply into my forearm, and the skin nearer my wrist takes on the pallor of a fish belly. I’ve fashioned an effective tourniquet, and seeing my makeshift medical setup working brings me a subtle sense of satisfaction.

Nice work, Aron.

What else will I need? Basic first aid says to put direct pressure on a wound, so I’ll need something to wrap the end of my arm, minimizing any blood flow that sneaks past the tourniquet. The cushioned crotch of my biking shorts would make a good absorbent pad, and with the four feet of unused yellow webbing that I could cut from the anchor, I can secure the shorts around the end of my arm. Then I can stick my stump into my CamelBak mini-backpack, and with both straps around my neck, the pack will act like a sling, immobilizing my arm across my chest. Perfect.

Despite my optimism, there’s a darker undercurrent to my brainstorming. Though my mind is working on the amputation scenario, the operation is still only a theoretical possibility. I’m thinking, “If I cut off my arm, how will I stop the blood loss?” and “If I cut off my arm, how will I pad and sling my stump?” Because my knife is too dull, the rest of the plan is no more than an idle mental exercise. Until I figure out how to cut through the bones, amputation isn’t a practical choice; it’s more a point of theory that allows me to follow through on all my options. I wonder about my courage level and how my mental state will change if I can solve the riddle. As a test, I expose the shorter blade of my multi-tool and hold it to my skin. The tip pokes between the tendons and veins a few inches up from my trapped wrist, indenting my flesh. The sight repulses me.

What are you doing, Aron? Get that knife away from your wrist! What are you trying to do, kill yourself? That’s suicide! I don’t care how good a tourniquet you have, you’ve got too many arteries in your arm to stop them all. You’ll bleed out. You slice your wrist, and it’s as good as stabbing yourself in the gut. If you manage to get through the bones and free yourself, say you make it down as far as the rappel. That tourniquet won’t make a damn difference-the rescuers will find your depleted body sometime next month, pecked clean by buzzards down in that canyon. Cutting your arm off is just a slow act of suicide.

I feel vaguely ill and drop my left hand, allowing the knife to ease away from my skin. I can’t do it. Maybe I’m not ready to pursue amputation any further at the moment. Maybe that argumentative voice is right, though, maybe it is suicide. I’ll have to be a lot more strung out to go through with the amputation. Who knows, maybe some random person will come along tomorrow. All I can be certain of at this point is that, should the need arise for a prolonged and nasty operation-such as hacking through my bones like I was doing to the chockstone-my fortitude will have to be at an all-time high. I shudder at the thought, my eyes close softly, and my mouth gapes open. I can picture my blood spilled on the canyon walls, the torn flesh and ripped muscles of my arm dangling in gory strands from two white bones pockmarked with divots, the result of my last efforts to chisel through my arm’s structural frame. Then I see my head drooped to my sagging torso, my body lifelessly hanging from the knife-nicked bones. It’s like watching the closing sequence of a film, but it doesn’t fade to black. It’s my waking nightmare, a premonition that causes me to set my knife down on the chockstone’s shelf and retch.

Slowly, I blink. My vision blurs in a nauseating swirl, but then it stabilizes and my equilibrium returns. With the sickening surgical practice session over, I review my situation. I no longer have any options that I haven’t already examined and tabled as ineffective or deadly. Even though I’ve followed each potential scenario through its preliminary stages, I can’t presently go further with any of them. I’m stymied at every turn. I’ll die before help arrives, I can’t excavate my hand, I can’t lift the boulder, and I can’t cut off my arm. A sinking depression hits me for the first time. The optimism that has graced me for the last day is gone, and I feel lonely, angry, and scared. I whimper to myself: “I am going to die.” Probably in another two days, not that it matters when.

I will die here.

I will waste away here.

I will shrivel up, slumping here with my arm trapped in this place, when dehydration decides to stop toying around and finally kills me.

Why do I even bother drinking my water? It’s only prolonging my ordeal. Dismally, I wish for a flash flood to end it all. The thought of intentionally slitting my wrists fleetingly dashes in and out of my mind. My despair turns to adolescent anger. I hate this boulder. I hate it! I hate this canyon. I hate the morgue-cold slab pressing against my right forearm. I hate the faint musty smell of the greenish slime thinly glazing the bottom of the southern canyon wall behind my legs. I hate the breezes that blow grit in my face and the dim half-light of this claustrophobic hole where even the sandstone looks menacing.

“I…hate…this!” I punctuate each word with slaps of my left palm against the chockstone as tears well in my eyes.

The echoes of my anguish reverberate up the canyon and vanish into the afternoon. Then another voice, this one inside my head, speaks coolly.

That boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. That’s their nature. It did the only natural thing it could do. It was set up, but it was waiting for you. Without you coming along and pulling it, it would still be stuck where it had been for who knows how long. You did this, Aron. You created it. You chose to come here today; you chose to do this descent into the slot canyon by yourself. You chose not to tell anyone where you were going. You chose to turn away from the women who were there to keep you from getting in this trouble. You created this accident. You wanted it to be like this. You have been heading for this situation for a long time. Look how far you came to find this spot. It’s not that you’re getting what you deserve-you’re getting what you wanted.

Understanding my responsibility for my circumstances placates my anger. My despondency remains, but I stop striking out against the rock. One thought in particular circulates over and over in my mind: “Kristi and Megan were angels sent to save me from myself, and I ignored them.” Everything happens for a reason, and part of the beauty of life is that we’re not allowed to know those reasons for certain, though on this question, my conviction grows. They might not have had wings and harps, but Kristi and Megan came into my life to fulfill a purpose. They were trying to spare me from my accident. I am convinced that they somehow knew what was going to happen to me. Again and again I think about Kristi’s last question-“What kind of energy do you think you’ll find down there?”-and about their repeated urgings, but my stubbornness and ambition had closed my brain in a lock. I did get myself into this. Somehow, in some convoluted way, it’s what I’ve been looking for in my life. How else did I come to be here? We create our lives. I don’t fully understand why, but little by little I get that somehow I’ve wanted something like this to happen. I’ve been looking for adventure, and I’ve found it.