Excerpts from The New York Times
March 31, 2009
Climber Still Seeks Larger Meaning in His Epic Escape
BOULDER, Colo. - He called it “my accident.”
On Saturday, April 26, 2003, without telling anyone his plans, Aron Lee Ralston set out alone through Robbers Roost, a steep, treacherous, largely abandoned parcel of southeastern Utah backcountry last bent to human will by Butch Casidy and the Wild Bunch, who had found its forbidding terrain favorable to hiding from the law.
Five days later, after several unsuccessful attempts to dislodge an 800-pound boulder that was crushing his right hand, Ralston snapped first the radius and then the ulna of his forearm near the wrist, applied a makeshift tourniquet, sawed through the cartilage with a throwaway multitool, rappelled to the base of Blue John Canyon and hiked until he came upon a rescue helicopter.
“It was a blessing in a way,” Ralston, now 33, said in an interview. “It made me think about the way I was living.”
“It’s not about what you do; it’s about who you are,” he said. “And I went right back into the mode of being about what you do. That went into all these adventures, finishing the 14-ers, doing the ultra-races.”
“I still do like adventures,” he said, pausing awhile. “But it’s different. It’s not coming from an esteem-building, need-fulfillment place, like my life won’t amount to something if I’m not the first person to make some major accomplishment.”
Though strength and courage remain a focus of his speeches, Ralston said, “Now I’ve identified what that source is, and it’s love. We’re tapping into that source of strength and courage when we feel love, and we do it for our families and our friends and hopefully for the world at large. Those opportunities are out there all the time, and hopefully we’re doing it for that instead of just our own egos."
.
March 31, 2009
Climber Still Seeks Larger Meaning in His Epic Escape
BOULDER, Colo. - He called it “my accident.”
On Saturday, April 26, 2003, without telling anyone his plans, Aron Lee Ralston set out alone through Robbers Roost, a steep, treacherous, largely abandoned parcel of southeastern Utah backcountry last bent to human will by Butch Casidy and the Wild Bunch, who had found its forbidding terrain favorable to hiding from the law.
Five days later, after several unsuccessful attempts to dislodge an 800-pound boulder that was crushing his right hand, Ralston snapped first the radius and then the ulna of his forearm near the wrist, applied a makeshift tourniquet, sawed through the cartilage with a throwaway multitool, rappelled to the base of Blue John Canyon and hiked until he came upon a rescue helicopter.
“It was a blessing in a way,” Ralston, now 33, said in an interview. “It made me think about the way I was living.”
“It’s not about what you do; it’s about who you are,” he said. “And I went right back into the mode of being about what you do. That went into all these adventures, finishing the 14-ers, doing the ultra-races.”
“I still do like adventures,” he said, pausing awhile. “But it’s different. It’s not coming from an esteem-building, need-fulfillment place, like my life won’t amount to something if I’m not the first person to make some major accomplishment.”
Though strength and courage remain a focus of his speeches, Ralston said, “Now I’ve identified what that source is, and it’s love. We’re tapping into that source of strength and courage when we feel love, and we do it for our families and our friends and hopefully for the world at large. Those opportunities are out there all the time, and hopefully we’re doing it for that instead of just our own egos."
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Photo location: Tumthong beach, Prachuab Khirikan province
i'm still stuck on that he snapped his wrist...might process the rest of this lovely story later!
ReplyDeleteHe derived meaning from his ordeal, and that's the best part.
ReplyDelete