Back cover: “Lauren Elder set out in a light aircraft in company with the pilot and his girlfriend. It was going to be a joyride, sightseeing over the mountainous splendour of the Sierra Nevada range.
The Cessna hit the mountain fifteen feet from the crest. The joyride had turned into a nightmare.
After a night of sub-zero temperatures Lauren was the only one of the three left alive.
She faced the terrifying prospect of climbing down to safety, wearing only a jacket and skirt and fashionable boots, down 8,000 feet of fearsome, precipitous mountain to the desert below...”
I love that reference to “fashionable boots”...
The opening pages are written like a racy novel, which added a certain distance for me: somehow it wasn’t very engaging. From the moment the plane hits the mountain ridge, the book becomes hugely compelling. After a frozen night huddled in the wreckage with no underwear and crammed in a tiny space with the one other survivor, she finds herself alone as her second companion dies from injuries and exposure. Sensing rescue was unlikely she begins the long climb down the snowy mountain, despite serious wounds and the onset of hallucinations. The account of her long trek to safety is interspersed with details of the rescue mission launched by her boyfriend.
The most fascinating sections of the book involve her describing how she felt during the ordeal: “From the moment I had lowered myself over the side of the crest early that morning I had been aware of a feeling of pure physical strength. But it was really more than that. It was strength tempered by balance, a kind of power that seemed to spring from some untapped well. It was as if I had been granted an unlimited supply of energy, and I was amazed and confounded by it.”
This energy – a sense of purpose and defiance – saves her life: “I had known the feeling before. I had it sometimes when I was surfing. I would catch a big wave and ride it on and on, sensing that I was part of the sea. I didn’t have to think or even make an effort. We just flowed together, my body responding without any command; And it happened to me at other times – the best times when I was jumping a horse. Then everything was so finely balanced that I knew I could do no wrong, that whatever move we made together was right. But I could not believe I that I had this feeling on a sheer granite cliff in a mountain wilderness.”
She also comes to terms with death as being “neither dramatic nor even alarming”, simply something that “is”. It's impressive how wise and mature she is, and her will to live is inspiring: “I had also discovered, that spring day, that there is little that cannot be endured. Much of the time I had felt as if I’d been possessed of a special grace. That is all I could think to call it, grace. It was as if a transcendent power had been loosed in me as I made my way down that mountain. At times during the day I’d been filled with a peculiar sense of well-being, of elation. I had fallen out of the sky, had in the most primeval sense been lost in the wilderness, and it had not overwhelmed me. It had been, even, exhilarating.”
No comments:
Post a Comment