Life at the edges of death: Extreme by choice

Life at the edges of death: Extreme by choice
Torrey Orton
April 11, 2012

 
TJ's trials by near death – not his wish, his fate …

 

He was falling backwards into a bottomless glacial crevasse, joined by high tensile rope to three other climbers - two in front and one behind him. He stopped falling with a jerk after 15 meters of free-fall, only to be yanked into free-fall another 15+ meters as the porter behind him was pulled into the crevasse with him and dropped the length of the safety rope past him. The rescue commenced by the front two dropping separate ropes down to be buckled onto their safety harnesses.

 

But his hands were frozen on his safety rope, and soon started literally freezing as the wind-chill took the ambient temperature to -20C. He tried but failed to convince his right hand to let go and grab the new line…it took an hour to get through from brain to the hand, which effortlessly resisted loosening its catatonically traumatised grasp. Finally he and then the porter were hauled up.

 
This is a true story and it is not the source of TJ's primary nightmare. When TJ showed up in therapy he was wracked nightly by hourly wakeups snapping him upright in bed, as if at the end of that drop again, staring into a blank space in his memory of the events...part of which he could not recapture. This was turning sleep into a drama he'd never enacted before in his life. He wondered if they would stop, and then what it all meant anyway.

 
High risk sports like sky diving, paragliding, bungee jumping, BASE jumping, monster wave surfing, and cave diving have been around since lion-baiting was the entry price for manhood among Rift Valley hunter-gatherers. But with extreme sports participants can always choose not to play on any given day, while lion baiting was a must do for entrance to adulthood. It was work in its time. The difference between extreme outcome occupations and sports is this: workers do not get to choose whether to 'play' or not; if their shift is on, they're in play. Their story is for another day. The story of willing self-endangerment is today's.

 
3 Questions


I'm trying to figure out who are the audiences for this story, what is the objective and what is the narrative? First, the audiences I'm seeking here come in two brands: the fearful, look-young brigades (both young and old) who are the market for eternal youth treatments and preparations, and the fearless experience seekers who climb any mountain in search of a peerless cliff to rappel or jump, even better for the possibility or certainty that no one will be there to pick them up if this jump/fall is the one too far! Both groups are death defying in different ways. The bulk of my possible audience is judiciously discriminating choosers of appropriate lives and life activities – or so we may think we are. We may be death avoiding, too.

 
Second, the objective of this undertaking is to create perspective on this most central subject – the meanings of life/death. As there are many lives, there are many deaths. Dignified dying like dignified living is certainly not assured even for those most endowed with means and rights. Yet dying, like birthing, we share with all organic creation; these are the events where we leave and re-join the non-human. Dust to dust and all that…

 
Vulnerable awareness


Third, the narrative is vulnerability. A fault line of appreciation runs through these audiences: are they aware or not of their vulnerability to fate? My impression is that a major life stage, sometimes called midlife, is marked out from the preceding stages by this awareness. Much of its drama is fired by efforts to deny or avoid the awareness that we will all die. Few step up to embrace it comfortably. Some get to embrace it early, like TJ in the crevasse at age 21, which gives meaning to "having maturity beyond one's years". Often we do not choose the risk we find ourselves taking. TJ knew of it beforehand, but not in the sense he now does.

 
To embrace our vulnerability might lead to shifting our life focus from what we do to how we do it: to value ourselves for the manner of our efforts more than success. This opportunity comes sharply into view when the amount of future before us is growingly likely to be less than the past behind us. My age, for example.

 
Some psychologists tell us we can't reliably choose about much. That small much apart, the rest of our lives is contained in the largely self-programmed grip of habits. We choose from within their confines. But it would seem we should be better about choosing death-defying activities. Maybe we learn what they are by approaching them so close we can hear the breath of death, feel its power, taste its dryness…Or, maybe we seek death-defying activities because we can't quite hear or feel or taste ourselves in our normal living.

 
The normal is, after all, somewhat boring. We know how to do the normal things, what the risks are, what value we get from them. Like our cat, we cannot always resist climbing that bit higher, reaching that bit further, straining that bit longer…and if we do, we often have some other humans, as does the cat, to come along and catch us falling. In fact, we have whole systems devoted to just that: emergency crews (the extreme occupations) for every clime and consideration, as long as there are enough of us risk-takers around to afford the service.

 
Why some sports cannot be extreme…


There's a difference within this sports and extreme occupations. There are risky activities which are contained from start to finish within supervised rules – professional team ball sports of all types. Among them there are differences in the degrees of intentional violence spread across from minimal contact soccer games to high contact footballs and ice hockey. The latter is distinguished professionally by having the boundaries of legitimate danger policed by designated enforcers whose lifespan is shortened by a regime of concussions which start in high school play. This may be the boundary between normal contact sports and the extreme ones – the level of death threat allowed by the rules.

 
One-on-one struggles are more sharply framed to confront participants and observers with near death on the hoof. There's cage fighting ("mixed martial arts" for those who prefer a façade of discipline to a parade of punishments), whose objective is nearly death, as is boxing's. Or try Muay Thai for cultural variety and the pleasure of seeing small guys work hard without a covering of chemically promoted bulk.

 
And there are machine-mediated entertainments where death is possible but not intended - the various car and motorcycle racing formulas with a terminal smash just around the corner, or a fence jump to carry away a few spectators to boot. Long distance sailing competitions (Sydney/Hobart) can be deathly dangerous. But, after losing, seasickness is usually the worst result.

 
In Australia we have our own freelance sport: binge drinking - specialty of the young and younger olds, with death dealing potentials and fulfilments every weekend. These endgames are called "tragedies" when they are merely excesses of youthful riskiness. They seek, and achieve, meaning by "just having a bit of fun" (also the excuse-de-jour for public sexual harassment, racial vilification, bullying…), confirmed by their reports of having missed whole chunks of the fun they had – blacked out, but still standing. These are not extreme sportsters, though often the clients for extreme outcome occupations – police, security guards, paramedics …

 
Nor are those going into warzones for work – reporters, aid providers, observers – who die at greater rates than the extreme explorers, but not so high as alcohol/drug supported road kills. Theirs, the warzone workers, are respected deaths with damages for respectable reasons, though most of us may see them as extreme, too. Theirs is another realm of meaningfulness, also at the boundaries of life, whose purpose is clear. Just the price is high and we may dispute the appropriateness of paying it for one or another story.

 
So, back to TJ.

 

His worst nightmare snaps him upright in bed with a start five times a night – the same start every time: he feels the avalanche coming and can't remember it hitting him. The rest is history; it's unavailable to memory.

 

He was thrown, along with his three climbing partners, down the mountainside. Out of the tumble one landed on top of the snow mess. He started the recovery process, digging the other three of them out after a few hours in the snow – long enough for TJ to experience acute claustrophobia. Another first for him.

 

Two hours later he started the trek down the mountain and onto an ice field, following more or less in the steps of those in front, knowing that probable death could be a few feet off the marked path…but he forgot and slipped into a review of his just passed resurrection from the snow, precursor to the hourly shocked upright awakenings from his sleep…and he fell backwards into a crevasse….

 

And so, what's the purpose of his life? The hourly flashbacks had dropped from hourly to once nightly, assuming the shape more of questions than images.

 
Partly a response to these questions has to include their meaning for TJ's others…that is the meaning his life has for them and what his life does for their meaning. Another part of a response lies in the boundary between living and not: how much can we choose to live, rather than just take living as it comes? And how much does he, or anyone, need to try to live by testing themselves near the edges of death, in order to feel that they have lived as well as they can?…and so, too, others may feel they have as well, too, by drawing energy, direction, validation from his efforts as has happened publically in the Jim Stynes story lately.

 
These will all be particular answers; the questions remain universal general. One constraint on questions and answers is that some meanings cannot be created and sustained without the live possibility of failure. Limits cannot be set without exceeding them. The ultimate excess is death. This is the stuff of story, the material of literary practice past and present. Real stories which illuminate out potential by stretching the limits may also seem to be more fiction than fact – how can anyone be so good, or bad?

 
Next: Extreme outcome occupations: those who may die for us – police, firies, soldiers, and their commercial and volunteer colleagues. Do we care enough about them as they are caring for us??