Now Listening to: Down and Out, by The Academy Is…
First things first, I’m sorry for disappearing this past week. I went to Zions (the national park near St. George), and while I found wifi, I really wanted to disconnect a bit, so I stayed offline. And I guess that’s where the story starts, wednesday morning, October 15th 2008.
On Death
It’s called Orderville Canyon. Only, it’s not a canyon. This is a 10 mile slot canyon through Zions national park, ending in the Narrows. The last half of the hike is through a river of water, and in mid October that means cold. Throughout the trail are random obstacles, on average 15-20ft drop offs into enormous pools of water. It’s an 8 hour hike through this ice water. This is a life experience.
Within the first five minutes of the hike, at 10:00 am, we see a small stream trickling down the trail, and on the side of that stream is ice. Yes, it’s so cold that this stream is literally almost frozen. It’s frigid. The crew consists of my Dad, and my cousins Ryan DeVries (12 years old), Dan DeVries (his dad), Blake DeVries (my age), his girlfriend Paige, and obviously myself.
While the walls started closing in, 40 feet, 20, 10, the temperature was dropping quickly. In the sun it was almost 60 degrees, pretty comfortable, but once you walked into the shade you could feel it drop a solid 20 degrees. Wearing a hoodie and a jacket, it was just slightly chilly (only wearing a swimming suit on bottom). We found a little patch of sunlight to eat our lunch in before returning to the shadey walk. Around half way through the hike we hadn’t encountered any water, and were beginning to think it was dry at this time of year.
These hopes didn’t last too long, as we encountered our first obstacle. It’s a 20 foot repel to a big pool of water, which would become somewhat of a recurring theme later on. Luckily there was a log to walk on and avoid contact with water. We moved on fairly quickly, maybe 20 minutes later to get the 6 of us down. It’s not like a wall you can walk down holding the rope, there’s a good chance of scraping up your arms and legs against the rocks as you descend as they jut out and disappear when you need them. My Dad got pretty scraped up on this first drop and actually got a bit wet in the pool, it wasn’t an easy thing to get past. We made a big zipline to get Ryan and Paige down. Entertaining.
As we first got in the water cold, was an understatement, but it was easy to recover from as it only went up to my knees. Getting back in the water a minute later, however, was absolute pain. My mind raced, understanding that I’d have to do this for hours, I didn’t know what to do. It… hurt. I think that’s the thought that got me through it, my comfortable American lifestyle needed to be broken up a bit.
It got easier. You don’t get used to water that cold, you just go numb, and numb I went. I am truly amazed that Ryan was able to get through the hike. Here’s a twelve year old kid going through as much pain as myself (he was wearing a wetsuit, but still). The water became more and more frequent, as did the obstacles. Every 20 minutes we’d stop, get out the ropes, find a route down, and slowly get everybody down. Eventually the water was a constant, with occasional patches of dry land to walk on.
Though we got numb, it’s not like it didn’t take a toll on our bodies. I blame adrenaline for keeping our sanity and energy levels steady. As we came to an obstacle that looked bad, there was no apparent way to repel down, and there was a huge pool at the bottom we’d probably have to swim through. I saw a trail up the mountain side that seemingly got us past the obstacle and back down onto the path. I went ahead to scope it out, and found a way down to the trail again a few hundred feet later.
As I was climbing back down I started realizing that there was no path down, and we’d have to repel from here anyway. About the time I had this thought, I looked down and realized I was walking on an extremely steep wet rockface. It had been wet for a really long time, and had a thin film of extremely slippery moss on it. Another thing that happened is that both my legs slipped out from under me and I slid down toward a 20 foot cliff. At the bottom were more slick rocks and the river. I spread all my arms and legs out, sprawled out in an attempt to stop myself, falling. I opened my eyes and realized I was looking right off the edge of the cliff. I had stopped around a foot (maybe less) from the edge.
I didn’t really move, scream, say anything, breathe, etc. I just looked around, my heart wasn’t beating fast, I had an inhuman calm about me. I kept looking around for another way down before I heard Dan yelling at me to not move, that they’d come throw me a rope. So I waited, still calm. Why would I be freaked out? I haven’t felt stress in a year, haven’t felt true fear, anxiety free, no pain, nothing.
I got back up fine, and we went and found a good place to repel down. It was a 60 foot repel, and it took forever to get each person setup to descend. It was at this point, standing on unstable patches of dirt for 30 minutes, that the exhaustion set in. Physically and mentally drained, it was late, it was cold.
I shivered.
We moved on the minute we were back on solid ground (or rather, once we were back in an ice cold river). This wasn’t really fun anymore, this was true danger and extreme discomfort.
We kept moving forward, over and under and around giant rocks. By now we were soaked up to our chests, Blake was still carrying Paige through all the water, on his shoulders if needs be. The view was absolutely breathtaking, but I was starting to break down a bit.
During one descent my dad slipped and went down into the pool of water, but he was fine. Dan went next and slipped as well. Unfortunately he landing facing the other way, in a shallow pool. He stood back up really fast and limped to the dry ground. I heard him tell my Dad he broke his leg as he grabbed two walking sticks and limped away. Blake and Paige had gone ahead and I was left with Ryan on the edge. He started to tear up, and… I got my calm back. Finally a chance to help, to understand that we had to really work together to get through this alive.
My Dad let us walk on him to get down so we wouldn’t slip, and we kept going. I talked to Ryan, asked him about BYU football (he’s quite the fan), talked to him about anything to get his mind of things. I carried him through big pools of water and made footholds out of my already-raw hands to help climb off boulders. I don’t say this to brag, in fact it became less difficult at this point. I wasn’t even thinking about myself anymore, and it really helped.
Although we had obstacles to get over, the biggest ones that required rope to get through were over by the time Dan broke his leg. We were lucky. We finally got the narrows where it was just a river to get through, and right as nightfall hit we were on a dry trail back.
I’m not sure what happened the rest of the night, other than eating three PB & Js, and half a gallon of fruits and veggies.
On Life
The next couple of days were a blur. I cleared some things up with my bishop, got ready to become an elder and talked logistics about when I should/could leave on my mission. I spent hours talking with Lonny and driving around AF. My car broke down, my dad drove us half way to logan in one night, and some amazing girls picked us up in Brigham city (God bless you Cami).
I deleted 80 gb of pirated movies, over 100 pirated games and half my music library (10 gb, roughly 2000 songs). Some of the music I had borrowed from friends (aka stole) I couldn’t live without, so i spent 150$ on new cds and iTunes downloads. I read my scriptures for hours a day, read Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’, Steve Pavlina, etc.
Mr. Pavlina said that when you change courses in life one of the first things you lose is clarity. It’s like turning a corner in your car, for a minute you can only see a few feet in front of you, but once you’re done turning you can see far down the road once again. I’m lost, after months of having everything figured out.
I’m still proud of myself for improving so much lately, but it’s not enough. I’m not stretching myself as far as I need to. There’s so much to be done in this life, and we just don’t have time to throw around.
“Use boldness, but not overbearance; and also see that ye bridle all your passions, that ye may be filled with love; see that you refrain from idleness”
We absolutely cannot afford to get stuck in the world. Life is fragile, as steady and safe as it seems to be, we’re a minute away from facing God, and when that time comes, how will we be judged?
“There is no other way or means whereby man can be saved, only in and through Christ.”
Yes, sin is difficult to overcome, though it’s mostly black and white. Getting caught up in the world is our greater problem. We were the noble and great ones before we came to earth, but how do we handle it when we come down here? Will we be overcome by what this world has to offer? Maybe we’ll give the lord the back seat, and just turn to Him when life gets tough.
“Do not let us be slothful because of the easiness of the way”
Stand a little taller. I promise you, life gets better, no matter where you are.
|dave
. Except Blake, good job man.
