Aron Ralston
Benefitting the Wilderness Worshop
No one was coming to save him. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going. Solo voyages weren’t unusual for avid climber and outdoorsman Aron Ralston. It was a beautiful day to drive from Colorado to Canyonlands National Park in Utah. During an afternoon trek he was descending through a slot canyon when a large boulder came loose above him, crashing down and ensnaring his right arm between the rock and the canyon wall 50 feet below. Over the next five days, Aron found the courage to do what he needed to do in order to survive and in this episode, Aron shares lessons on what difficult circumstances can teach us about acceptance, peace and welcoming all of what life is.
In this episode, we talk about:
Aron’s introduction to Extreme Adventuring.
The days his body was wedged into the side of a mountain.
How he was able to shift his mind from panic to problem solving.
Breaking his bone with a boulder.
His timely rescue after 127 hours.
The greatest lessons he’s learned through his recovery.
Wise Words
It was moving me along in both this aspiration towards a career, but it was also having this other side effect of turning me into a hardcore individual where really relationships didn’t matter as much. I had friends, but I really didn’t let anybody get too close because there was a passion at work on me, rather than me exerting this passion in my life. It was almost like I was the subject of this passion that was pushing me to climb these very difficult mountains.
If pain is intended to relay information, I got the message after the first few minutes. So, an hour into this it was like that is no longer important, I get it, yes, danger. Except the more dangerous thing than the rock was my reaction to the rock. Potentially, at least, if I kept exerting myself, exhausting myself, that I would very quickly deplete myself and die.
Even within truly the first hour that I was trapped there, I knew that I was going to have to use that knife in order to cut through my arm. I even said it out loud, “Aron, you’re going to have to cut your arm off.” Of course, in the beginning I was like, “I don’t want to cut my arm off,” but then as I came to understand that is an option, but it is at the bottom of the list
It left me by 3:00 that afternoon understanding that I was no longer standing in the bottom of this canyon, I was actually standing in my grave. There was nothing that was going to get me out of there. Cutting my arm off, I was just going to bleed to death before I could even possibly get to a place where I could be rescued. So, I got my video camera out. That was both a preliminary low point in the experience for me, as well as this incredibly powerful and beautiful moment where I got in touch with what was truly important in my life.
It was there as I’m looking into that camera and talking to the most important people, my parents, my sister, and saying the most important things that I think you can imagine saying, that was where I discovered that it was not just the will to live that was going to keep me going, but it was the will to love.
As I had already been out there for 48 hours, I started to kind of reconsider the calculus of this, the probability of dying on the way out of here, as high as that is, that starts to look pretty good compared to the certainty of dying in this spot. So, if I don’t do anything, I’m dead. The one thing I still haven’t tried that I could keep working at is to amputate my arm.
You cannot simultaneously hold profound gratitude and depressing despair in your heart at the same time. There’s only room for one of those things.
I recognized that it wasn’t up to me. By being able to let go of the pressure of control, that if I just try harder I can guarantee the outcome of this situation, that’s the kind of person I generally am, I’m very driven and kind of rigid, and it’s as much a strength as it is a weakness. To be the opposite of that was what actually brought me peace.
I kept pushing harder and harder until this crack echoed in the canyon, and I knew that I had broken the bone and thereby I was going to do this. I’m going to get out of here, I’m going to get a hug from my mom, I’m going to get home, and I’m going to see that little boy someday.
When I tell this story it’s the story about the guy who was smiling when he cut his arm off, because that to me just says everything, I think, that you need to understand. That this was not horrific at all, but it was the most beautiful experience that I had ever had in my life.
It’s more about learning the lesson of sometimes it’s time to back off, to turn around, it’s not being so rigid or driven. It’s, again, finding that balance between the control or the surrender, the acceptance or the resistance.
When something upsets me because there’s some great disappointment, or there’s some disaster that’s unfolding, but to ask myself, “How can I use this? How can I find some advantage in this adversity?”
LINKS
Website: www.aronralstonspeaker.com
Charity Donation: Wilderness Workshop