Three
– EDWARD ABBEY,
I GLANCE AT MY WATCH; it’s 4:19 P.M. I have been trapped for an hour and a half, hammering my knife against the boulder for about half that time. There will be daylight until around nine P.M., but I already have my headlamp over my blue cap. Though it’s not on right now, I’m glad I brought the lamp on this day trip. As with my knife, I usually wouldn’t carry it on what should have been a short outing. That warning in Kelsey’s guidebook about checking for spiders and snakes was helpful, not because I’ve seen any creepy-crawlies, but because it suggested bringing a light. I’ve already used it to throw light up into the half-inch gap where my squashed wrist is caught, to further examine my hand from every angle.
One of the more important concerns I’ve been trying to address is how much of the boulder’s weight my wrist is supporting. If it’s holding barely any weight, the amount of rock I need to remove is less. The more the boulder is being propped up by my hand and wrist, the more it will settle as I remove weight-bearing material. In fact, for me to get my hand free in that case, the rock will have to settle completely onto the wall. Unfortunately, there’s a good probability that since there’s a gap between the stone and the north canyon wall immediately below
I try not to think about the fact that I am stuck. Though it’s an irrepressible reality, thinking about it doesn’t help my situation. Instead, I concentrate on finding small weaknesses in the face of the boulder just above and to the left of my trapped right wrist. My earlier instincts led me to etch a demarcation line above the softball-sized volume of rock that I have decided I must eradicate to gain my freedom. I’m speculating on a flaw in the rock’s structure, in a slight concavity that’s above the bulge almost six inches from my wrist; the demarcation line runs through this concavity. I start at my line, high on the face of the rock but a few inches below the top, and hack downward, attacking as near to my mark as I can manage. Tapping, then pounding, my multi-tool’s three-inch stainless-steel blade against the stone, I try to hit the same spot with each strike.
Everything else-the pain, the thoughts of rescue, the accident itself-recedes. I’m taking action. My mind seems determined to find and exploit any seams or natural cleavage of the chockstone to hasten the removal of material. Every few minutes, I pause to look over the boulder’s entire surface to make sure I’m not missing a more obvious target.
But the going is imperceptibly slow. I unfold the metal file from the tool, and for five minutes, I use it to etch the boulder. It works only marginally better than the knife, and only when I turn it on its side and saw down at the line. The rock is clearly more durable than the shallow rasps of the file. When I stop to clean the file, I see the grooves are filled with flecks of metal from the tool itself. I’m wearing down the edge without any effect on the chockstone. I inspect the boulder again, and noting the nonuniform coloring, its relative hardness compared to my knife and the walls, and its similarity to the chockstones of the gauntlet up above, I realize this boulder isn’t strictly sandstone. It seems to have come from the darker-colored layer within the Navajo sandstone that formed the overhanging lip a hundred yards upstream near the S-log at the head of this lower slot canyon, the one I’d hung from before dropping irreversibly into the sand about two hours ago.
“That’s bad news, Aron,” I think. “The rock layer formed that ledge because it’s more erosion-resistant than the rest of this canyon. This chockstone is the hardest thing here.” I wonder if it wouldn’t be faster to carve out the wall instead of the boulder, and decide to give that a try. Switching from the file back to the three-inch blade, I strike the multi-tool against the wall above my right wrist. The knife skitters across the pink sloping canyonside. Very close to stabbing myself in the arm at every blow, I conclude the geometry is prohibitive-I can’t slash at the wall in the right spot because my arm is in the way.
I pause to rest my left arm and hand and brush a little pulverized grit from my right forearm. I can’t see any change in the boulder’s position. I return to hacking at my target line in the concavity. Tick, tick, tick…tick, tick, tick. The sound of my knife tapping at the rock is pathetically minute, but all the same, it resounds through the canyon. I can strike the rock only so hard, otherwise my knife skitters off and I bash my knuckles, or I miss my target. I’m hoping to loosen the crystals around a gray knob in the chockstone and remove a quarter-sized chip in one piece. It will be an uplifting and measurable gain, but even the tiny bulge seems to be an impregnable safe. No matter what I try, I can’t crack it.
Another hour has passed. It’s six P.M. now, a little over three hours since the accident. It’s still warm, but a few degrees off the high temperature of 66 degrees back at three-thirty, according to the watch looped on my left pack strap. I blow some dust off the area I’ve been assailing with my multi-tool and look for any discernible sign of progress. I get my eyes in close to the rock and inspect the mineralized characteristics of my target zone, wondering again if there might be a place with a less durable crystal structure. Considering my negligible progress, the question is more theoretical than practical. The only way I’m going to drill my way free of this stone is if a geologist’s pick magically materializes in my hand.
I feel like I’m in the most deadly prison imaginable. My confinement will be an assuredly short one with only twenty-two ounces of water. The hiker’s minimum for desert travel is one gallon per person per day. I think again about how long I might last on my scant supply-until Monday, maybe, Tuesday morning at the outside. Escape is the only way to survive. In any case, the race is on, and all I have is this chintzy pocketknife to blast my way through this boulder. It’s akin to digging a coalmine with a kid’s sand shovel.
I become suddenly frustrated with the tiresomeness of pecking. My mind runs the analysis on how much rock I’ve chipped away (almost none) and how much time it’s taken me to do it (over two hours), and I come to the easy conclusion that I am engaged in a futile task. As I debate my remaining choices, my stress turns to pessimism. I already know I won’t be successful in an attempt to rig an anchor for a pulley system. The rocks forming the ledge are six feet above my head and almost ten feet away; even with two hands, that would be an impossible chore. Without enough water to wait for rescue, without a pick to crack the boulder, without an anchor, I have only one possible course of action.
I speak slowly out loud. “You’re gonna have to cut your arm off.” Hearing the words makes my instincts and emotions revolt. My vocal cords tense, and my voice changes octaves.
“But I don’t wanna cut my arm off!”
“Aron, you’re gonna have to cut your arm off.” I realize I’m arguing with myself and yield to a halfhearted chuckle. This is crazy.
I know that I could never saw through my arm bones with the blunted knife, so I decide to keep trying to free myself by pecking away at the boulder. It’s futile, but it’s the best of my current options. As I hit the rock, I imagine the early evening sun projecting ever longer shadows across the desert. The blue of the sky deepens while I carve unproductively for the next hour, taking infrequent and brief breaks. My understanding of the engraving above my right arm, “Geologic Time Includes Now,” changes from Gerry Roach’s intended warning to a spur of motivation. It becomes a hopeful reminder that, like an agent of geologic time, I can erode this chockstone, perhaps enough to free my hand from the obdurate handshake of the sandstone block. However, the stone has rapidly dulled my knife. I reconfigure the tool to expose the file again, and continue sawing down along the line I’ve etched above the grayish bulge at the near edge of the concavity.
While I’m filing, I think about the first time I visited Utah. I’m not sure what brings it to mind. Perhaps it’s in response to the nagging question of how did I get here, how did I end up stuck in this place? That first trip was with my family on spring break in 1990, my freshman year in high school. We went to Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and
