Patricia Sheridan's Breakfast With ... Aron Ralston
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Aron Ralston is seen in this undated self-portrait from the top of a mountain.
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He is the very definition of "between a rock and a hard place."
Known as the mountaineer who cut off his right arm with a pocketknife to survive, hiker Aron Ralston, took the drastic action after an 800-pound boulder trapped him in Blue John Canyon, Utah, for six days in May 2003. His book "Between a Rock and a Hard Place" published in 2004 describes the ordeal.
On Wednesday, the Carnegie Mellon University graduate kicks off the Pittsburgh Speaker Series, presented by Robert Morris University at Heinz Hall. For tickets (which are sold only for the complete seven-event series) call 412-392-4900 or go to pittsburghspeakerseries.org.
Q: Did you fear death or suffering more during your time in the canyon?
A:What I was afraid of, I think, it wasn't really either of those for me. Those were very certain. I knew I was going to die, and I knew I was going to suffer a lot before I died. I didn't want that, but I think what I was afraid of most of all was the trauma I knew it was going to cause my family. That was partly why I made the videotapes. Just saying goodbye to them and explaining what had happened. I was afraid of leaving my loved ones in a nasty way.
Q: How does one control utter panic?A:
I felt panic for the first, I would say, 45 minutes or maybe an hour after the boulder had fallen on my arm. For that time there was no controlling it. There wasn't really any way to put a harness on that energy. It was only after I finally understood the amount of water I had was relatively little compared to what I would need to have to survive for any length of time that I was able to calm myself down and realize it was more than this rock is on my arm. The situation shifted in that first hour from "This rock is on my arm," to "I'm going to die here." I wouldn't be able to wait for help to come because I didn't have enough water. Once the real seriousness of the situation came down that is when I felt the transition.
Q: Do you have nightmares about of those days in the canyon?A:
I can't say I've ever dreamed about being back there, but I think about it a lot. I've had dreams where I see myself having two hands. I see myself as being a whole person.
Q: In the years since surviving the entrapment, are you inclined to feel you are living a charmed life?A:
I definitely feel very blessed, both from what happened in Blue John Canyon and some of the things that have come to me in my life since then. I don't feel invincible by any means or anything like that. I feel that it happened for a lot of reasons, and it's been a tremendous gift for me and my family and a lot of people who were touched by having heard about it. I do think it was a miracle and a blessing. Possibly one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me. I've really tried to make it all of that.
Q: At one point in your book, you say there is a reason for everything, yet we are ultimately responsible for the circumstances we find ourselves in.A:
Yeah, I do think there is a balance between that and I do think there are larger energies at play in the universe and in our lives. We interact with those [energies], and yet we also have the ability to make choices and to take actions. So I think there is a mixture, balances between those different forces.
Q: The voices that you talk about hearing, did they feel like they were coming from outside of you?A:
I've thought a lot about that. It's kind of a tough thing to understand. It somehow sounded like it came from outside of my head as opposed to those kind of internal monologues. But, I recognized it as being somehow part of me. Not my thinking voice and not that same kind of inner voice, but another voice that was still part of me but was outside of me. I mean I heard it like somebody played a tape. There were actual sound waves bouncing off the walls of the canyon. It got louder and louder shouting at me to use the boulder to break my bones.
Q: In your book you say that you didn't pray right away and when you did, you prayed to the devil as well as God. Who do you think answered that prayer?A:
In the way I view God, I think it was God that answered that prayer. It's sort of a loaded word. I asked for deliverance from that canyon, and I had to abide the time that I did there in order to have the experiences that I did and to have the miracle of the rescue operation unfold the way it did. It was God that spoke to me and gave me the opportunity, and I took the action to be able to get myself out of there. So it was the combined forces of faith and free will.
Q: I guess your prosthetic is now a multi-use tool?A:
Yeah, in some ways. I have many different prosthetics. I have one for mountaineering, one for rafting or kayaking, mountain biking, skiing, almost every sport that I participate in. A lot of prosthetics are fairly customized and a lot of them I helped design. They definitely enable me to go out and continue the lifestyle that I love and enjoy.
First Published September 24, 2007 12:00 am
