Life and death experiences
Dec. 1st, 2003 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azziriaI've just been reading about the problems and differences of opinion surrounding the making of the film of Joe Simpson’s book Touching the Void. (If you haven’t read the book, go and do so now - I don’t know if I’ll go and see the film, but the book is just an amazing story.)
I was lucky enough to see Joe give his Siula Grande talk before the book came out. I didn’t even know the story, being at that time totally immersed in the caving world rather than the climbing world (a climber friend took me along). In the beginning it seemed to be just another mountaineering talk, then as the story got more and more incredible I sat there thinking “I know he survived, because he’s standing here in front of me, but I’ve no idea how the f*ck he can possibly have done it”. I was gripped. Totally and utterly.
The whole ‘cutting the rope’ thing must inevitably hold some sort of horrible fascination for anyone involved in any sort of outdoor pursuit, unless they have no imagination at all. To be in that situation, where you have to choose between killing a friend or both of you dying. Objectively, the ‘right’ choice is clear: better one dies than two. But what does it do to you, personally, to have to make that choice?
Of course when you’re out there, caving or climbing or whatever, you don’t think about death. You don’t feel it could ever happen to you, because otherwise you couldn’t do it. But occasionally something happens that forces you to face it.
A friend broke her thighbone below a particularly tight and awkward section of a cave we were exploring in the Austrian Alps. When the news first reached us on the surface I was absolutely sure that she was, effectively, dead. I didn’t see how we could get her out alive from where she was with an injury that severe. It was a horrible moment. (I’m glad to say that, because she is one tough lady, and because the whole team pulled together and were amazing, against the odds she survived and is now as good as new - and still caving.)
Another friend spent two days trapped by floodwater on a ledge in a cave in Spain, next to the body of his colleague who had drowned when the cave unexpectedly flood-pulsed. How do you handle that?
DH once slipped and trundled a large boulder down a 150-foot pitch in Yorkshire. For the best part of a minute, until he managed to get his bearings and get his light back on, I thought he’d gone with it. The longest minute of my life (with extra spice added by the fact that last time we’d been down that cave, a few months before, we’d sat on that same boulder and chatted). The full impact didn’t really hit me until we were halfway home - I had to pull the car over on the hard shoulder of the A1 and sit and shake for 20 minutes - physically, uncontrollably shake with delayed shock.
Still prepared to go out there and do it, though. I guess that every time you get away with it you feel that little bit more alive.
I was lucky enough to see Joe give his Siula Grande talk before the book came out. I didn’t even know the story, being at that time totally immersed in the caving world rather than the climbing world (a climber friend took me along). In the beginning it seemed to be just another mountaineering talk, then as the story got more and more incredible I sat there thinking “I know he survived, because he’s standing here in front of me, but I’ve no idea how the f*ck he can possibly have done it”. I was gripped. Totally and utterly.
The whole ‘cutting the rope’ thing must inevitably hold some sort of horrible fascination for anyone involved in any sort of outdoor pursuit, unless they have no imagination at all. To be in that situation, where you have to choose between killing a friend or both of you dying. Objectively, the ‘right’ choice is clear: better one dies than two. But what does it do to you, personally, to have to make that choice?
Of course when you’re out there, caving or climbing or whatever, you don’t think about death. You don’t feel it could ever happen to you, because otherwise you couldn’t do it. But occasionally something happens that forces you to face it.
A friend broke her thighbone below a particularly tight and awkward section of a cave we were exploring in the Austrian Alps. When the news first reached us on the surface I was absolutely sure that she was, effectively, dead. I didn’t see how we could get her out alive from where she was with an injury that severe. It was a horrible moment. (I’m glad to say that, because she is one tough lady, and because the whole team pulled together and were amazing, against the odds she survived and is now as good as new - and still caving.)
Another friend spent two days trapped by floodwater on a ledge in a cave in Spain, next to the body of his colleague who had drowned when the cave unexpectedly flood-pulsed. How do you handle that?
DH once slipped and trundled a large boulder down a 150-foot pitch in Yorkshire. For the best part of a minute, until he managed to get his bearings and get his light back on, I thought he’d gone with it. The longest minute of my life (with extra spice added by the fact that last time we’d been down that cave, a few months before, we’d sat on that same boulder and chatted). The full impact didn’t really hit me until we were halfway home - I had to pull the car over on the hard shoulder of the A1 and sit and shake for 20 minutes - physically, uncontrollably shake with delayed shock.
Still prepared to go out there and do it, though. I guess that every time you get away with it you feel that little bit more alive.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-01 05:48 pm (UTC)This was what I felt when I was out solo backpacking this Fall, and the boulder I was standing on decided to take a little trip down the hillside, about 40 meters' drop. It was rather like that scene in The Two Towers, where Sam takes a tumble outsige the Black Gate. The rock was the size of a Volkswagen. I managed to stay on top of it, by dashing around the uppermost surface, and leaping off before it crushed me.
I got to the bottom of the hill, filled the water bottles in the stream, purified the water, and hiked carefully back up to the campsite.
And then the shaking started. Rum tastes good in Gatorade.
I've downplayed the story to everyone in RL. But that's probably the closest I've come to dying. One tiny miscalculation at that moment, a twist of bad luck, a little less balance or forgetting to tap into the surfing experiences of my youth? I would have been under that rock.
And no one would have even missed me for three days.
I feel more than "a little bit more alive." I feel The next morning, I was petting the rattlesnake coiled around my campstove. *grin* That wasn't really dangerous, merely a calculated risk.
Thanks for the reminder. :-)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-01 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-01 09:48 pm (UTC)That said. Me,
We were halfway down the mountainside when I started giggling...
I had to go ahead and warn his mother before she saw all that blood, then drive him to a bush hospital where he had 27 stitches put in his face.
So - not quite life threatening but it certainly put a scare into us.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-01 10:10 pm (UTC)However, still wuss, so hat off to you lot.
The closest I come to life threatening situation is other's life is in danger. I'm a First Aider, so nothing major, but well, I am what it says. The first one. The one who has to somehow not think and deal with all the blood or the shock or the screams or the no-pulse-no-breathing.
Have seen a few things and there is nothing in this world better than the sight of paramedics who take over.
Still, I get the shakes after something happens. Last time an accident happened right in front of me I dealt with the casualty everything was well, I didn't even get any of the copious blood onto my fine self made linen and lace shirt and then... *shakeshakeshakerattlerattle* long when the paras had taken over.
Delayed shock, happens also to those who are not directly hit. Whenever I see an accident or a commotion or anything I pray 'please please please Gods do NOT make me have to help' because I am frightened.
Someone to die under my hands? Oh my Gods. Please not. Please.