Between a Rock and a Hard Place

twenty-second naps, and I was reliving the same sequence over and over again.

Another five cycles, and I was sure of it: I was trapped in time, like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Somebody was doing this to me. Theresa. I convinced myself that she had put a spell on me. I was helpless against her; the only way I could break her control was by staying awake. No matter what, I couldn’t help myself-when I stopped to wait for her, I dozed off instantly. The delusional paranoia was so strong that it never occurred to me to check my watch, to talk with Theresa, to create some variety to the experience, or to slow down and walk at her pace, thereby eliminating my opportunities to fall asleep. What did occur to me was to memorize the rocks I stepped on. If I could prove to myself that I wasn’t stepping on the same rocks, that would be undeniable evidence that it was all in my head. Therein I found another problem: I couldn’t remember the rocks, not even the ones I would lie on to rest.

We continued the downward traverse with my mind stuck on an infinite playback loop of rocks. After two hours, we exited the boulder field, and I told Theresa about my delusions. She told me that hallucinations are a predictable part of sleep-deprived ultra-hiking. It was nearly twenty-four hours later when I arrived at my truck, some thirty miles away, and I put an end to my delirium with a well-deserved night’s sleep.

Back in the canyon, the only preoccupation that alleviates the ceaseless BBC torture is pondering the question of whether I should or shouldn’t drink my urine. That subject is enough to drive everything else far into the mental background. The issue of taste doesn’t really concern me; it’s going to taste like piss, no matter what. The consideration is whether the urine will prolong my survival or bring on my demise. I speculate that by this point, my urine has a considerably elevated salt content, but I can’t know if the salinity is greater than that already present in my blood. If my urine has fewer salts than my blood, then it won’t be a problem. But at a higher concentration, it would be like drinking salt water, essentially accelerating my dehydration. I wonder, too, if the toxins and other potentially harmful contents are present at dangerous levels. This is the stuff my body is trying to get rid of, and here, I’m going to put it back in.

Sitting in front of me at eye level on top of the chockstone, my translucent blue CamelBak reservoir makes the liter of brackish orange urine look brown in the dim evening light. In the four hours since I peed into the container, the urine has separated into stratified layers: a viscous brown soup on the bottom, a dingy orange fluid in the middle, a clear golden liquid on top. A half-inch-thick accretion of yellow-white sediment collects on the liner bottom; more and more of the dregs fall out of the solution as the urine cools. I prod the CamelBak with my finger, disturbing the solids. It reminds me of the yeast in the bottom of a bottle of home-brewed beer. Of course, it’s substantially less appealing.

Night falls again, presaged by the routine increase in the up-canyon breeze and another invasion of mosquitoes. Why are they so active just before dark, I wonder, and then say aloud, “And where the hell are they coming from?” There must be standing water someplace in the canyon-I didn’t pass any on the way here, but maybe at the bottom of the Big Drop rappel. I think I remember something in the guidebook. I check my map. The photocopy is wearing thin along the crease lines, but I can still read the marking that calls out a pool below the rappel. It’s probably a pothole, a remnant of the last rainfall, like the greenish slime on the south wall behind my feet. In fact, my map indicates that there should have been a pool in the upcanyon section, and another where I am, but they have obviously evaporated. I hope there’s some kind of water supply still available at the rappel. I bet it dries up in the summer and winter, but the slime, the mosquitoes, and the gritty residue on the walls make me think there is water now. That will be very important if I get out of here-it’s the only source for four miles, until Barrier Creek appears in the bottom of Horseshoe Canyon, just beyond the Great Gallery.

You’re not getting out of here, Aron. You’ll never see water again.

Dark.

Cold.

Stars.

Space.

Shivering.

I return to the pattern of fidgeting and rest that helped me through last night, but I can get only ten minutes of stillness from each cycle. It seems colder tonight, or perhaps I’m feeling the increased effects of starvation and dehydration on my body’s metabolic systems. With the certain deterioration I’ve suffered since my entrapment began, I assume my body is not generating as much heat. The deeper cold increases my compulsion to retain every bit of heat possible. What else can I do to insulate myself? Unplugged from the CD player, the headphones around my neck haven’t produced music for three days. I pull them over my ears all the same, like half-sized ear-muffs. When I tuck my head inside the rope bag, I shut the zipper until it slides into the skin of my neck. With the bag so tightly closed around my face, I hope to benefit from my breath’s warmth, letting it warm my head and preheat my next inhalation without taking me too close to the brink of suffocation.

Breath after breath fills the rope bag with moist air as I focus on exhaling against the waterproof liner. Instead of letting my breath dissipate into the chilly night air, I try to recapture some of my body’s water content from the humidified exhalations. Using the rope bag like a breathing chamber seems like a sound theory, though I have no idea if it will help. I get the familiar sense that I’m prolonging the inevitable. After five or six minutes of breathing in the bag, the cold seeps up from my legs and arms into my core. Shuddering, I struggle to hold the position, sitting in my harness for another three or four minutes: left hand grabbing my right elbow, head nestled on my right biceps, knees bent into the rock shelf. But the shivers tear across me like attack dogs. I have to extract my head from the bag in order to fidget with the ropes around my legs and the coverings on my arms. I’m getting too efficient-rewrapping my leg coils takes only twenty minutes-and I have a more difficult time warming up between sit sessions. I don’t even bother to take up my knife and chip at the rock; I just suffer my misery and pray that I’ll live through the night.

Midnight. It’s now Tuesday, April 29. After hours of debating the issue with myself, I decide to take a sip of my urine. I still have nearly a half-cup of fresh water left, but I want to find out what the urine tastes like and whether I’ll be able to stomach it. With the CamelBak bite valve reattached to the tubing at the stub where I cut off the hose during my first attempt to fabricate a tourniquet, I suck two tablespoons of urine into my mouth and swallow it immediately. The night air has chilled it substantially from its initial 98 degree temperature, to maybe 60 degrees. The sharp saltiness is repugnantly tangy and bitter. My face wrinkles into a knot. Surprisingly, it’s not as horrible as it could be-I don’t gag or puke. My quagmire deepens. If the urine was so insufferably foul as to be undrinkable, I would have my answer-don’t drink it. But because it’s feasible that I could drink almost half of what I peed out before I get to the unfathomable brown filth, the question is still open. My thirst would have me drink two cups right now. That doesn’t seem like a good idea, though. I think I’ve heard of people undertaking some cleansing dietary program that encourages you to drink your urine, but I have to assume that you stay well hydrated at the same time. Maybe that memory is a figment-I can barely trust my brain with anything at this point-but clear pee would definitely be a better alternative than what I have available. In the end, I don’t know if I should drink any more of the urine, and there’s no way for me to accurately guess. I suspect it will be worth the gamble, but not yet. I’m going to keep sipping my water for the next twelve hours, until it runs out, and then I’ll think about drinking my urine again.

More cycles. Three A.M., Tuesday morning, hour sixty. I mark my time trapped here at two and a half days. I’ve adjusted my sipping schedule to fit the shorter cycle duration. I delicately draw my water bottle from its perch and note the amount remaining: a scant three ounces. Holding the bottle between my legs, I unscrew the top with my free left hand. I hold the lid back, raise the bottle, and before I fully wet the inside of my lower lip, I force my hand to withdraw and put the bottle down, as I have done once an hour through the night.

The last mouthful of my water supply has become a sacred element. In effect, the liquid has transubstantiated from something of this earth to something holy and eternal-it has become time itself, and in time, it has become life. The longer that water lasts, the longer I will last.

Or so I tell myself. I’ve developed several signs that tell me dehydration has already set upon me, and even if I conserve my last water, I’ll still die fairly soon. My body no longer has enough fluids to perform at an optimum level. My eyes are sunken and dry-I avoid looking at myself in my video-camera episodes because of the gaunt stretch of skin over my cheekbones. The desert air contributes its irritants to my contact lenses, but my eyes can’t flush the contaminants. As the dehydration has stressed my heart muscles, my heartbeat has become weak, sometimes erratic, and fast-I time it at a resting rate of 120 beats per minute, over 60 percent faster than normal for me. Despite my elevated heart rate, my circulation has slowed over the last three days as my blood has thickened, inhibiting the delivery of nutrients to my organs and the removal of metabolic wastes. My pump is burning up as the