experienced outdoorsman and mountaineer, but he had had almost no sur
vival training when, during a canyoneering trip in Utah’s Blue John Canyon
in 2003, his hand and forearm got trapped under a massive boulder.
With very little water and food to sustain him, and his hand and fore
arm crushed, Aron spent five days trying to lift, pry, and chip away at the
boulder that held him captive. Nothing worked. To his credit, he realized
that the only way he would ever live to see his family and friends again was
to snap the two bones in his forearm and cut his arm off, which is exactly
what he did.
In that crisis, Aron had nobody to count on but himself, and his book,
Between a Rock and a Hard Place, vividly describes the emotional roller
coaster he experienced. In the end, it was his intense will to live that saved
him. I wonder how many other people would have made it through such
an ordeal.
For each story like Aron’s, however, there are many sad tales of indi
viduals who, though they were knowledgeable about the ways of the wil
derness, panicked and died. It wasn’t their skill that abandoned them; it
was their ability to think straight under the most stressful of circumstances.
If you can maintain your composure and your will to live, you will make it
through virtually any survival situation.
You can bolster your will to live in many ways, first and foremost
by thinking about the people you love and for whom you want to sur
vive. Some turn to spirituality or religion in times of great stress; you may
derive comfort, confidence, and strength from prayer and meditation.
Studies of survivors show that having a goal may empower them. The goal
to see their loved ones again. The goal of revenge. The goal of telling of the
event. Having a goal and keeping it in sight is a driving force in survival.
Make no mistake about it: when you find yourself in a survival situation
you will confront stresses that can break the resolve of even the toughest indi
vidual. If you fail to anticipate these stresses, they can turn you into a mass
of indecision waiting for the end to come, or worse, a panicstricken lunatic
wasting precious energy on tasks that don’t increase your chances of surviv
ing. In survival, as in life, your attitude will affect your outcome. If you play the
victim, you will be one. If you imagine yourself the hero, you will be one.
A very ablebodied woman once told me that she knew she could
never handle being alone in the wilderness, and, in fact, would likely kill
(^40) | Survive!