Fight Like Hell
“After my brother's death, my father never walked very well again. He had to struggle to lift his feet, and, when he did get them up, they came down slightly out of control. From time to time, (my brother) Paul’s right hand had to be reaffirmed; then my father would shuffle away again. Like many Scottish Presbyterian ministers before him, (my father) had to derive what comfort he could from the faith that his son had died fighting.”
Norman Maclean writing of his father in A River Runs Through It.
❄️
That night, when I asked if anyone was a Presbyterian, the room remained silent. No one had died that afternoon, and so perhaps it didn’t matter. They all had been avalanched, and they had all fought and came away with their lives. Why hadn’t they died? What led them to the situation where they were avalanched?
As the avalanche forecaster that day, I issued an overall LOW danger. I had placed my bets that the southerly winds would wait until dinner.
It was not to be.
And this set the terrible wheels in motion. Early that morning, backcountry skiers picked up their tragic kits and headed - for some - into the unknown - and for others - into an experience unknown to them before or since. By the end of the day, eight backcountry skiers had been avalanched.
I asked them, Had you seen the winds drifting snow into unstable slabs? They all nodded, in solemn agreement. Did you believe me (the LOW avalanche danger), or did you believe your own lying eyes?
They believed me.
And yet each of them fought. In some cases they fought for their and their partner’s lives. Some of them ended up in the emergency room - and not the morgue - because they fought.
When the end is coming, some sit back and accept their fate. Others will not. I make no argument that people are wired one way or another; sometimes we can be wired differently minute by minute.
But when the avalanche is nigh, what will you do?
❄️
For my friend Tom Kimbrough
And for V&J with a second Chance...and yet another.
