~upon being caught between a "rock and a hard place"~

A great Sunday evening to everyone out there with special greetings to my family and friends back in south central Kansas.  A steady stream of traffic is flowing along Highway 50 and as I watch it go by, I have to wonder where in the heck all those people are heading to.  We've heard motorcycles flying along like crazy since summer began and it's not at all uncommon to see riders from all over the place along the city streets of Montrose. Just this weekend alone I have seen license plates from Illinois, Texas, Florida and even the good state of Nebraska.  This part of the planet is a popular destination for a lot of people and I have to laugh as I realize that I didn't even know there was such a place as this until 7 months ago.  My idea of the state of Colorado was the land up to Denver on the east.  The rest was just this place you drove through to get to Utah.  Obviously what I said all along and will probably say until my dying day was right~"You know, I don't get out very much."

In my spare time lately, I've been picking up a favourite book of mine to reread yet once more.  And since this would make the fourth time that I've read it,  then that's the sign of a good book, right?  My son Grahame gave it to me for Christmas in 2011, the year of "old lefty".  It was an inspirational book for me to read and it couldn't have been given to me at more appropriate time in life.

The book is about Aron Ralston who was a 27-year old mountaineer from here in Colorado who, while hiking alone one day in Blue John Canyon, Utah, literally found himself between the proverbial "rock and a hard place".  In his book, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place", he describes his harrowing ordeal of being pinned against a canyon wall by a very unforgiving boulder that had become displaced, trapping his right hand and forearm beneath it.  For 6 days of what anyone would easily describe as "hell", he waited for help to arrive.  When finally on that sixth day it was obvious that if he was going to get out of there alive, he would have to be the one to do something about it.  Aron did the unthinkable, at least by most of our ways of thinking.  With little more than a "not so sharp" leatherman's tool, he cut off that portion of his arm in order to free himself, in order to live.  Somehow or another, he made it out of the canyon, found help, and lived to tell the story.  

I was inspired by his story, one I heard about during my initial few months of having my arm in a cast after the now so infamous "curb jumping" incident.  I was struggling doing things one-handed, very easily frustrated and so very close to giving up more than once, shoot more than a hundred times.  Nothing was going right.  I couldn't wash my own hair, couldn't get dressed on my own, couldn't even make a stupid peanut butter sandwich, and a thousand other things that I deemed important in life.  For me, the "rock" was the curbing that my body smacked that August morning and the "hard place", well that was "old lefty's" exoskeleton.  I was convinced that when I died, they would wheel me into the crematorium as an old lady, STILL wearing a cast.  Hopeless is about as a good way to describe it as I can think of.

But after reading the account of all that young canyoneer went through that April morning in 2003, my struggle with a badly broken arm didn't seem to be quite so serious after all. When my recuperation was done, I'd still have an arm and hand attached.  Unfortunately for him, that would not be the case.  I thought about it, after reading all of his book, whether or not I'd be able to have the guts enough to take a knife, sharp OR dull, and amputate my own limb.  Friends, I really don't know if I have the answer to that one and I sure as heck hope that I never have to find out.  

How about you guys~have you ever been "between a rock and a hard place" in your life?  Ever found yourself in one of those situations that inspired the phrase, "damned if you do, damned if you don't"?  I suspect we all have and I am no different.  Try as we might, life is full of situations that require our making a choice and sometimes that is a "not so much fun" kind of moment.  I have no real advice on what to do when that kind of option arises, everyone has to make their own mind up on that one.  Thankfully, we usually don't encounter them on a regular daily basis.  Life wouldn't be very fun if we did.

Hey, it's the "teacher" in me, but may I suggest the reading of this great book to you?  It's actually a pretty easy one to get through and if you get squeamish about the thought of surgery without anaesthesia and sorely lacking in sterile operating conditions, you could always skip over pages 280-285.  But if you do skip over them, you'll be missing out on truly the best part of the story~Aron Ralston's strong will to live and NOT to die.  Don't worry, no book report is assigned but I'll bet you will be like me and love it enough to suggest it to others to read and really that's what a good book report does any way.

Have a great evening everyone out there, wherever you can be found this day.  Thanks guys for helping to make the world a pretty darn good place to live in, all things considered. A peaceful night's rest for you in order to wake for the beginning of the morrow.  

One of my favourite quotes from Aron Ralston's book, attributed to the Italian mountain climber, Walter Bonatti:

"Mountains are the means, the man is the end.  The goal is not to reach the tops of the mountains, but to improve the man."   

                                   My shameless plug for a really good book.

The Gunnison River flowing at Morro Dam in Gunnison County, Colorado~some pretty incredible "rock and hard places" to be seen here.

Early morning~frequent returning visitors to the alfalfa patch this morning.  Been watching these two young bucks all summer long.  They are beautiful~a "just because" kind of photo.