Destiny

At this moment, early in the morning before the sun, I am listening to the sound of the rain falling. It's been doing that all night, since we are in the middle of a Pineapple Express. The picture shows what is called an "atmospheric river" bringing warm rain from Hawaii, and as you can see in the picture, it's aimed right for the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday SeaTac had the all-time record rainfall for the date, and they expect the same to happen today. North of Seattle, it's supposed to be wet and warm, but most of the serious flooding problems will be south of us.

This kind of rain hits our part of the world every few years, and it inevitably causes flooding, which I suspect has already started. But that is not what I wanted to post about today.

Yesterday I went by myself to see the movie 127 Hours. If you haven't heard, it's an autobiographical movie about the guy who cut off his own arm after becoming trapped in a Utah desert. For five days. Last night as I began to slip into sleep, I thought about one part of the movie that keeps coming back to me: his hallucinations about the rock that pinned his arm, that the rock and he were intertwined from the beginning of time to meet at that moment.

The concept of destiny intrigues me, as I consider some of the accidents I've had in my life. In 1981 I was bicycling down Boulder Canyon on the first day of summer. It's a 17-mile-long descent and I was really enjoying myself as I sped down the canyon. I was sharing the road with cars, of course, so I moved as far to the right as I could as they made their way around me. Bicycles are common on this road and most of us know how to share.

There is a tunnel through the rock towards the end of the descent, and I would usually ride right through it, but the traffic seemed a little heavy and I worried about not being visible, so I slowed to a stop and waited for a break in the traffic. I got back up onto my bike and started through the tunnel, not moving very fast at the beginning. I was standing on my pedals trying to pick up speed when I was struck from behind by a truck.

Here is a picture of the tunnel. You can see it's not very long, but everything converged just right for me to be invisible to the driver, eyes not adjusted to the dark yet (when my accident happened, there were no lights at the top of the tunnel). I was thrown free of my bike up into the air and landed a few feet away. The driver saw me just before impact but was unable to stop before hitting me. He did, however, stop immediately when he realized what had happened.

I lay there unable to move and knew I was hurt, with no idea how bad it might be. I remember that my first instinct was to wiggle my toes, and I felt them all moving, so I knew that I was not paralyzed. The driver stopped traffic in both directions and somehow (they had cell phones back then, I guess) within fifteen minutes an ambulance arrived. The details are hazy now, but I remember a woman giving me a shot of morphine in the back of my hand, which seemed to calm things down quite a bit. When I was moved to the backboard, even with the shot I was in a lot of pain.

Next thing I knew, I was in a hospital bed, flat on my back, and x-rays showed a fracture of the last thoracic vertebrae. It was amazing to see shards of bone pushed into the tissue. I was very lucky, there was no damage to the spinal column and they left the bone fragments to be absorbed by the body. I remember the incredible pain a few days later when they tried to get me to sit on the side of the bed. I fainted. But they got me fitted for a back brace and within a few weeks I was back at work while wearing the brace. It kept me upright and out of pain; I was only in discomfort when I tried to wean myself away from it.

I had no permanent damage, other than a misshapen vertebrae. That particular place in your back, T-12, is not needed for carrying weight on your back and is not involved in the pelvic region, which would have meant quite a different story for walking. Since there was no permanent injury, I received a small settlement and many visits from the concerned driver of the truck. My bike was pulled completely under the truck and demolished. When I saw it, I was horrified to think how it would have crushed me! I would not be writing this, obviously.

So here I sit, listening still to the rain, and thinking about destiny. I was fortunate, but so many different elements had to align for this accident to happen. And more than that, for it to end up being a positive, rather than a negative, experience. I was able to buy camping equipment and take a six-week-long trip to Peru that fall, hiking in the Andes, having wonderful experiences that I could not have afforded before the accident.

When I was watching the movie yesterday, I remember actually feeling a huge sense of relief when Aron Ralston had finally freed himself from the rock, minus his arm. He wasn't home free yet; he had to rappel down a cliff face to reach possible rescue. With one arm! I was mesmerized by the fortitude of this young man and will head down to the bookstore today to get his book. I'm not quite ready to stop thinking and experiencing what he went through. His destiny changed completely with that experience. Since I was in Boulder when it happened in 2003, I remember well reading stories about him becoming an inspirational speaker and writing a book the next year. He had hallucinations about a son during his experience, or a premonition that he would have one, and this year his son Leo was born. He met his wife two years after the accident.

The convergence of circumstance changes lives every single day. Sometimes it is tragic and horrible, and sometimes it is sublime. And sometimes it's both.