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‘Make your boulders into blessings’
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DENVER – Aron Ralston, whose death-defying hiking experience was detailed in the major motion picture, 127 Hours, and the book, Between a Rock and a Hard place, told attendees at the Optometry’s Meeting opening session how he considered the incident a blessing.
An avid outdoorsman, Ralston set out on what he expected to be a 10- to 15-hour hike through Blue John Canyon in Utah on his own, without telling anyone where he was going.
As he maneuvered through a chasm, a large boulder dislodged and trapped his hand and wrist.
Ralston told attendees that he has a degree in mechanical engineering and training in search and rescue. He attempted to devise a system of pulleys with his climbing ropes to move the boulder, but to no avail.
Over the course of 6 days he remained trapped there, trying to chisel away at the boulder with a 3-inch knife, attempted cutting through his arm with that blade – which had become dull – filmed messages to his family and friends, ran out of food and water, drank his own urine to avoid dehydration, lost 7 pounds a day, shivered uncontrollably through the cold nights, then finally gave up, conceded to the fact that he would not make it out and carved his own epitaph on the canyon wall.
When his shivering stopped in the early morning of the sixth day and he was sure he was about to die, Ralston said he had a vision or dream. He saw a little blonde boy playing, and the boy turned around and ran into his arms and said, “Come on, Daddy, let’s play.”
“I felt this was my future,” Ralston said. “But then it was all gone, and I was back at the boulder, shivering worse than ever. Except that little boy changed everything. I knew I would get through this somehow. I knew I would see that child some day, that he would be my future son.”
He would have to cut off his arm, but he realized he would not be able to cut through the bone and would have to break it first – and he started smiling.
“It was without any hesitation, no reluctance, that I dropped my weight,” he said. “I heard the crack. I knew I was going to get out. Then I realized there are two bones in the forearm.
“I’m using my whole body to move so I could crack that other bone,” he continued. “I opened my knife that was 1.5 inches long and still had a little bit of edge. I sank it into my arm and I felt it. But with every little cut, working through the skin, the muscle, having to use the pliers to get through the tendon, my smile got bigger and bigger. Thirty minutes, 40 minutes, then the knife touched the nerve. I won’t lie, I wasn’t smiling then. It felt as if I had just thrust my arm into a cauldron.”
Ralston said he got through the last little bit and his feet moved.
“And then I stepped into my life again,” he said. “That’s when I almost passed out. If you can imagine having everything taken away and in one moment to have it all given back – every moment of happiness and joy, to have it in one moment of possibility. We’re not wired to handle that. My knees collapsed.”
Ralston wrapped up his arm and used his backpack as a sling and headed out of the chasm. He found a pool of water and drank about a gallon, he said. He walked for 5 hours, losing nearly 2 liters of blood, and came across a family hiking. They said he was being searched for, and they gave him water and walked with him to an area where a search helicopter saw them and landed to pick up Ralston.
Ralston credits his mother for saving his life. The shop owner where he worked had called his mother when he did not show up for work. She reported him missing, informed the authorities where she suspected he might be hiking, and a search was initiated.
After receiving a new chance at life, Ralston said he started climbing.
“We are here to make this world better, to speak up for voices that don’t have a voice for themselves,” he told the audience. “For me, I work to protect our precious places in Colorado and Utah – those gifts that rock gave me, those 2 square feet of sacred space in that canyon.
“Understand that when our boulders come, what they’re there for is to remind us what’s important,” he continued. “Those people, those relationships. It’s not just what we do, but how we love.”
Ralston is a father of two children: a little girl and blond-haired son.
“You can make your boulders into blessings, too,” he said.
“And any day where you don’t have to drink your own urine is still a pretty good day,” he concluded. – by Nancy Hemphill, ELS, FAAO