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Outside Magazine September 2001

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A World of Hurt (Cont.)

LET'S SEE. Before the torn rotator cuff it was a triple hernia caused by carrying too many ridiculously heavy expedition backpacks. Before that, separated ribs from an unexpected slip on an ice-coated, thousand-foot wall. A torn biceps tendon while mountaineering in Mexico. A broken leg (shiny six-inch plate with six long screws) telemark skiing. A smashed patella, a crushed cheekbone, a broken hand. They're considering naming a wing after me at Gem City Bone and Joint.

There may be some serious outdoor athletes who have never been hurt, but I don't know any. All my friends have scars and the stories to go with them. If you've never hurt yourself, you've likely never pushed yourself. Climb enough mountains, mountain bike enough miles, kayak enough rivers, and you will get injured. This is not a probability; it's a money-back guarantee. Wrecks come with the territory. The world is one giant garden of cliffs, canyons, and cacti, and if you're out there exploring it for any amount of time, you'll discover that flesh is softer than stone, weaker than water, and highly vulnerable to velocity.

There may be outdoor atheletes who've never been hurt, but i don't know any. Push yourself enough, and you'll get injured. Guaranteed.

Hence we veterans of the outdoor life all have our proud lists of injuries, which of course make for some fine tales of struggle and heroism. But don't be fooled. Injuries are mistakes made manifest. Rare is the accident not due to pilot error. You can't blame the world—it is what it is. The nature of nature is fundamentally merciless. You can't blame ice for being itself, transient, capricious, unfaithful; nor rock for being existentially rock-hard and immobile; nor water for being fluid, fast, and reckless.

This is the first lesson of injury: to take the blame.

THE NURSE was right. I came out of the operation looking and feeling like someone had tried to cleave my shoulder from my body with a broadsword. For the first week I could do nothing more than lie in bed and moan. Any movement was excruciating. Even in sleep I was sheathed in agony. I am still doing my best to forget every second of that first week.

(A note about the difference between doctors and nurses. Doctors do not care about your pain. Don't expect them to. They know pain will pass, eventually. Doctors care about the ends, not the means. If you are capable of getting back to the life you had before you messed yourself up, they have done their job. Nurses, on the other hand, care about the means. Listen to them closely. Heed their advice.)

It is common to curse the thunderstorm of pain, but it often brings forth that most rare and delicate of flowers: humility. It is difficult and peculiarly unbecoming to be puffed up with pride when you are too weak to sit up. Arrogance evaporates when you need help going to the bathroom. Machismo melts with pain. If it hurts bad enough, you will break. This is extraordinarily useful self-knowledge.

To become an invalid is to pass through perhaps the most important veil of life, the veil of compassion; to be just like the people you might ordinarily ignore, the old, the weak, the disabled, the sick. All those gray-faced people, thin and fatigued, suffering some imperious malady that you, purely by the whim of the gods, do not have to face. One twist of fate and you're just like them. Hurt, hurting, in need of help.

A serious injury doesn't affect you alone. What about the person who steps up to take care of you? My wife fed me that first week, put ice packs on my shoulder and a damp cloth on my forehead, helped me to and from the toilet.

This is the second, albeit greatest, lesson of injury: to be humble.

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