The Bamboo Lab Podcast
"Ordinary people doing extraordinary things!"
The Bamboo Lab Podcast
Aron Ralston's Amazing Story: "The boulder didn't take my arm, it gave me everything else."
Aron Ralston's name became synonymous with extraordinary survival when, trapped by a boulder in Utah's Blue John Canyon for six days, he amputated his own arm with a dull multi-tool knife to escape certain death. Yet as he reveals in this profound conversation, the physical act of cutting through his arm represents just a fraction of his story's true significance.
"We don't get to control what happens to us, we get to choose how we respond," Aron reflects, distilling two decades of post-trauma wisdom into a philosophy that transforms boulders into blessings. The gift of his ordeal wasn't merely survival but a complete reorientation toward what truly matters—loving relationships, present-moment awareness, and the spiritual connections that transcend our physical limitations.
The podcast delves into the mystical dimensions of Aron's experience, from recording goodbye messages that filled him with gratitude rather than despair to experiencing a vision of his future son that gave him the determination to free himself. These moments reveal how crisis can strip away superficial concerns and connect us to deeper truths. "You cannot simultaneously hold profound despair and profound gratitude in your heart at the same time," he observes, offering a practical approach to navigating life's inevitable challenges.
Now approaching fifty with two children, Aron describes how his understanding of "victory" has evolved from achievement to connection. The father who once sought to conquer Colorado's highest peaks now finds his greatest wins in moments of connection with his children and in choosing peace over being right. His powerful mantra "I'm still here" serves as both a survival declaration and a mindfulness practice that grounds us in the fundamental gift of existence.
Whether you're facing your own metaphorical boulder or simply seeking to live with greater presence and purpose, Aron's journey offers a roadmap for transforming adversity through acceptance, gratitude, and the recognition that our true legacy lies not in what we accomplish but in how we love. Listen, share, and discover how to use life's challenges as catalysts for profound transformation.
https://bamboolab3.com/
Hello and welcome to the Bamboo Lab Podcast with your host, peak Performance Coach, brian Bosley. Are you stuck on the hamster wheel of life, spinning and spinning but not really moving forward? Are you ready to jump off and soar? Are you finally ready to sculpt your life? If so, you've landed in the right place. This podcast is created and broadcast just for you, all of you strivers, thrivers and survivors out there. If you'd like to learn more about Brian and the Bamboo Lab, feel free to reach out to explore your true peak level at wwwbamboolab3.com.
Speaker 2:Welcome everyone to this week's episode of the Bamboo Lab Podcast. As always, I'm your host, brian Bosley. Folks, I'm not going to give a big introduction or bio to this guest that we have today, but I will give you a clue. Back in 2003, in April of 2003, there was a young man he was 27 years old, was out doing a solo descent of Blue John Canyon in Utah and something happened. He slipped down this crevasse and a rock followed him down and crushed his right arm. He was stuck there for several days and what he had to do to get to freedom and save his life is a story you'll never forget. You may know him by his book Between a Rock and a Hard Place amazing read. We'll have a link to that on the show notes today. Or you may remember the movie starring James Franco called 127 Hours.
Speaker 3:Enough hints Today we have Aaron Ralston on. Aaron, my, my new friend, welcome to the bamboo lab podcast. Thank you so much, brian, I appreciate it. Uh, yeah, oftentimes I'm just simply known as the guy that cut his arm off. So I, I, I I'm glad you gave a little bit more context, okay well, I do have to tell you this a, aaron.
Speaker 2:My mom has never seen the movie. My mom doesn't watch TV other than the three channels she has. She's never read the book. My mom is 90 years old. She'll be listening to this. She's the first listener of every show. I was out hiking today and I called her and I actually spoke to her through my whole hike and we were talking about I have to go back and do a podcast this afternoon. She goes who do you have? And I told her and I didn't tell her about the arm part until I told her your story and you were hiking and you're climbing these mountains because I hike a lot and I said you know how he got free, mom, she goes. No, I said he cut his arm off and she went oh my God, she couldn't, she was just, she was flabbergasted. So what do you think she said to me Brian, you make sure you're careful when you're out hiking. I'm like I'm not hiking Utah man and I'm not going down in caves and canyons.
Speaker 3:But that is a good lesson. Let your mom know where you're going. Be careful, watch out for falling rocks. Carry a sharp knife.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Cover the bases here. Good job, mom. Yeah, the basis here, you know good job, mom.
Speaker 2:Until I watched the movie again last night for the second time, aaron, I didn't realize then that the um, the um, the yeah, their multi-purpose tool you had was actually a cheap one so cheap.
Speaker 3:It was free actually. Yes, technically with a flashlight. That's amazing. When I go out with friends and there's an opportunity, we need a knife or something. Sorry guys, famously I only carry doll pocket knives, so I'm no use here. We need to cut the salami and cheese for lunch.
Speaker 2:That one you could probably handle with that knife.
Speaker 3:I don't know, it was not much better than the handle end of a spoon. Really that's amazing, but it did get the job done. I'll say after six days.
Speaker 2:After six Do you still have that knife?
Speaker 3:I do. Actually, I'm looking at it right across my office, are you really? I have a little, you know, museum including yeah, that tool, uh, it's uh. Yeah, it was not the one that I would take, but it happened to be the one I had in my um, in my glove box, and I love the sort of the metaphor of that. You know that you say, you, you go to battle with the army. You have not the army you want to, so sometimes you find yourself, you know, cutting your arm off with the army.
Speaker 3:you have not the army you want. So sometimes you find yourself, you know, cutting your arm off with the tool you have not the tool you want, but it's how life goes sometimes.
Speaker 2:That right. There is a great lesson for anybody. I think, going through any problem you have right now in life, it doesn't matter what it is. You know because I think so often, aaron, when we're going through a problem, you know obviously not as egregious as yours most often, but any emotional, financial, health problem, relationship problem, it's like we're looking for all these other tools or looking for more help. But sometimes you just have to fight with what you have and you know and make the best of it, which you clearly did.
Speaker 3:It's the best way to create peace, to find presence in life.
Speaker 3:It's the best way to create peace, to find presence in life.
Speaker 3:It's about being in this very moment, not in some other moment that you wish you were, where you had more or less or less. You're just here with it, and I think it is really solid advice, especially because that's what we're made of, jumping already into the metaphysics of it all, but it's really, in the end, about our presence in this experience as human beings, that we don't always get to know everything we'd like to know before we have to make a choice or a decision. Get to know everything we'd like to know before we have to make a choice or a decision. We we don't always get to have all the resources that we prefer to have, and yet we still are in this, and so to give ourselves the grace with that and also to find the courage to take bold action, because that's that's really where the genius and the magic of life comes to. It's still about taking that leap making, as it were. For me, making that cut and not knowing, but committing to a process rather than an outcome.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love it. Well, we're going to get into all what you've learned, because I'm so curious to see where you've come from, that 27-year-old man to now. Next in October, going to be joining the 50-year-old men club here. We'll get into that in a minute. Can you tell all of us a little bit about who you are, your childhood, where you grew up, aaron? A little bit about your family, or maybe was there any one person that inspired you growing up?
Speaker 3:So a little bit about your background. Yeah, for sure, I mean I know you're based in the Midwest. I grew up in Ohio and Indiana. I was know you're based in midwest, I grew up in ohio and indiana, that I was born out in a rural farmstead, I mean after we came home from the hospital. But uh yeah, I grew up surrounded by cornfields and soybeans and, uh yeah, cows, and that was my dad's industry. That eventually brought us to indiana with the cattlemen's Association and then to Colorado with the Sheep Industry Association and I was 11 years old, moving to the west in the Rocky Mountains and my family.
Speaker 3:We started going out on vacations to the national parks and exploring all these grand landscapes and getting into the sports and activities as one does out here. It's kind of the amenities lifestyle that I still appreciate and pursue today. It was skiing. It then got into hiking and rafting and just all the exploring, and both the exploring of of the mountains but also the exploring that happens internally, which became more of the quest for me as I went through my adolescence and had my challenges. It was among the first boulders in my life as I make this metaphor about the rock, of course, that befell me in Bluzon Canyon but that I was a kid who had come to a new state, a new school, didn't have friends and relations here, that it was exacerbated by me being an accelerated kid and gifted and talented like I skipped a grade and so I was the smallest and youngest kid in the whole school and that didn't go great for me back in an era before we had anti-bullying programs and inclusivity programs and all the rest of it like my kids get to enjoy today. But it then fell to my ego and self-esteem project to find a way where I could build myself up in the midst of the feeling from others that I was less than or not enough, and I think it's a pretty universal experience when we have those suspicions or fears that we aren defense mechanisms. Even that part of it was to include the proof to others that I was enough, that I was capable, especially in then areas outside of academics. And of course you can see how this leads to the explorations, the adventuring and trying to be not just enough but even better and to then do things.
Speaker 3:And I set about a project in my early 20s where I decided I was going to try to become the first person to ever climb all the highest mountains that we have in Colorado in the wintertime, solo, which was something that had never been done before.
Speaker 3:And if you think for a moment about why that might be it had never been done before, it's because it was stupid, dangerous, just on the ridiculous level of extreme.
Speaker 3:And yet I embarked on that and survived my learning curve along the way through many, many adversities, which taught me a great deal about myself that I was someone who was capable, that I I could do things, that that seemed impossible, and in the midst of that I was about three-fourths of the way through that project of all these almost 60 mountains that we have, that rise about 14,000 feet above sea level, that I quit my career as a mechanical engineer and decided to move to Aspen in Colorado, where I was working while mountain shop.
Speaker 3:And then, in the off-season of my winter solo project, I found myself out on a walk in the park in Blue John Canyon. So I was a very experienced outdoorsman by that point and definitely overlooked some of the potential consequences of my choices that day. I made choices to go by myself, as I often did, but in this instance I didn't leave an itinerary. No one knew what state I was in. So I was out in the middle of that hike and when fate would deliver me a very interesting answer to a question that I'd long asked, which was who would I be? What would I do if my life were on the line?
Speaker 3:well, that question was answered yeah, if we have doubts, if we have those kinds of curiosities in our lives like am I good enough, am I, am I worthy that? What would I do? I've been inspired by other stories of adventuresurers, misadventurers, people who had found themselves on the very edge of experience of survival, and people who found something in themselves and I wondered what's inside of me. Now, that was not on the forefront of my mind as I was descending that canyon that day. I was just out for a good time. I was celebrating a successful winter of climbing and it was for me to take like spring break. Winter was over. It was now the end of april. It was 80 degrees out in the desert.
Speaker 3:Uh, just gorgeous bluebird days, beautiful sandstone slot canyons not the grand canyon, these are micro canyons, almost in, in the sense that they might only be as wide as your shoulders and maybe five to ten stories deep and that you're descending down. There can be drop-offs, rappels, the down climbs and it's uh, it's largely, especially in a canyon. That's been been documented. It's, it's, uh, an adventure, but you still mostly know what's coming. And, yeah, I I was not at all put off by the idea that, okay, I'm going down through this section by myself, uh, that there might be risks, um, that I couldn't get myself through.
Speaker 3:Now.
Speaker 3:That was all without anticipating, of course, that the exact circumstance that befell me maybe a one in a million kind of situation but that I dislodged a rock that I was climbing down off of, that was stuck between the walls of the Canyon, kind of an obstacle at the edge of a drop off, and I was using it to continue my descent.
Speaker 3:And when I was dangling from it at full extension, as if I just slam dunked a basketball off the backside of it, that I torqued that boulder free from its moorings where it was wedged, and I was falling then in the bottom of the canyon, the rock was falling from my head and just in a split second, as I put my arms up above my skull to try to protect myself, push myself out from under the rock, I was successful in that, but of course I would expose my hands.
Speaker 3:And as the boulder ricocheted between the walls, it smashed my left hand just for a split second. It rebounded, smashed my right hand against the right wall of the canyon, it it bounced once more and in that split second, now my hand slipped in between the boulder and the wall even further, as then the walls tapered down in this constriction right in front of my chest, where the boulder became wedged as it had been, but about seven feet lower down right in front of me, as I'm standing in this narrow defile in the canyon bottom, and my arm was now disappearing, crushed into this possibly small shadow between the boulder and the wall of the canyon.
Speaker 2:Okay, I've got a question for you. As we talk on here about so much about human behavior and peak performance in the human mind, what is the first thought that happens? What's the first thing that goes through your head when you look and see your hand and your arm trapped?
Speaker 3:There was a moment, before I even felt the sensation of it, where it was just a shock of disbelief of not not being able to understand and comprehend Like it looked, like my arm had been swallowed by the boulder and the wall that that somehow I just like plugged my arm up to like where you would wear a wristwatch into. This it was. It was a gap of about a half an inch, like the width of my pinky finger, as opposed to three or three and a half inches wide that your wrist is there. So it was just the impossibility, the visual impossibility of what I was seeing. And then, of course, there's a micro delay of the time it takes for the sensation to travel from your nerves all the way up to your brain and boom, now the pain, something I've never experienced before.
Speaker 3:And that was where, of course, the next micro delay is the adrenaline rush that comes out, where I am filled up with the fury of rage of energy, trying to harness it, as I had some cognition that, okay, this is actually an opportunity here, use all that brute force to try to lift the rock, try to rip my arm free.
Speaker 3:I mean, I was punching the boulder, I was cursing at it like I could just offend it into letting me go, uh. But it was very clear, even though this, this rage lasted for over 45 minutes, that I was not going to brute force my way through this. I was going to have to eventually, and and I did, after taking a lot of deep breaths, I was able to use what I now see in hindsight, as a rubric to manage crisis, which is this STOP acronym, the S-T-O-P to stop, take a breath to T. Think my way through this, as opposed to trying to brute force my way through it, that I might be able to, uh, oh, make some observations and come up with some options and p decide on a plan that I would, I could use some of that mechanical engineering background that I had, that I would be able to problem solve like rationally, use some of the tools that are in my brain, as opposed to just the strength that's in my muscles to, yeah, get myself out of this predicament that I found myself in.
Speaker 2:Okay, I got so many questions to ask you. The one question I have for you and this is a big one, so the one question I ask everybody quite frankly and I'm not going to ask you is what is the one of the biggest obstacles you've ever had to come over? What is the one of the biggest challenges you've ever had in your life? Let's forego that question today more universal.
Speaker 3:I'm interjecting here, but I do think, to humanize me, that I'm not just this character from this esoteric story, but that I've gone through, like I mentioned, bullying and being ostracized by my peers in my adolescence, of course, financial hardships, hardships at times where, cumulatively, my debt far exceeded by orders of magnitude my checkbook balances and my income even. There have been plenty of times where my health has been a huge issue, especially, as you mentioned, I'm rolling towards 50 that one body part after the next seems to come up with a new boulder. In my life I've been through divorce. I've been through child custody litigation. I've had the challenges that come with having two kids, as well as the fact that they're with two different moms, and sometimes co-parenting scenarios that aren't the most copacetic. The health of my parents Six years ago my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and after six months he passed away. All of these things in my life. I've dealt with depression and anxiety.
Speaker 3:There are so many of these obstacles, of boulders, and so, without getting down about it, I have to remind myself, just as I did with the boulder and the canyon is that these things arrive for us in our lives for a reason, and we get to choose. The reason that's kind of the good news about it is that we get to decide what is this here for me to do. It is that we get to decide what is this here for me to do, and when we intentionally create meaning around an adversity, that's how we can turn it into an advantage. It's a process that starts with first discerning this is not just a boulder, a burden, but rather I can make it into a blessing. Yeah, it takes a whole lot of work and that intention, that determination takes entire, maybe years, of time and process in order to bring that to fruition. But it starts with the seed. And that first question is why is this here for me and what am I going to do with it?
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to just interject for a minute here too, aaron, because I think there's an audience member out there right now whose mouth is agape, and I'm talking directly to that member, that subscriber, that listener. You've watched the movie. Perhaps you've read the book. You know Aaron's story. I mean, the movie was an amazing hit. The book does fantastic. The movie was an amazing hit, the book does fantastic. Great read, by the way, for everybody. But yet you just heard Aaron, who you might have saw on the Howard Stern show. You might have seen his skint, his little cameo on the Simpsons. This guy's been, I think, interviewed by David Letterman, if I'm not mistaken, aaron, yeah, a couple times.
Speaker 3:I mean that is such a fun thing, like you know, growing up like idolizing him, being a Midwesterner, and I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm like sitting here, yeah, getting to crack him up Like what fun I've had with all this.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 2:I think, yeah, I think the lesson here is for that listener out there. You also heard Aaron say he also has struggles too. Personally, just like you do, just like I do. We all have had financial struggles. Perhaps you know I've gone through custody battles. Twice in my life. I went through a divorce. Many people have health issues, have lost their parents, go through so many people, have faced depression and anxiety.
Speaker 2:This is not just the challenges and adversity you face. These are universal challenges and adversities and when you have a gentleman like Aaron on here talking about how he still faces these things at times, we all do. But the idea is those adversities there, they arrive for a reason and we get to choose the reason. I love that. I love that what you said, and you have to find meaning around and why did it happen, potentially, and what am I going to do with it? I mean, that's probably the two greatest or the greatest lesson I've heard in 150 some episodes for anybody, which means all of us who are going through, have gone through or will grow through some type of adversity. So I appreciate that. I think that was perfect that was a nugget right there that we get to hear from somebody who actually went through something very challenging and traumatic at one time in his life. What 22 years ago, aaron? Yeah, 22 years ago, past April, right?
Speaker 3:Exactly, yeah, and I marked that anniversary because it was this time where I was given the greatest gifts that I've ever receivedating my arm. And to skip ahead a little bit to say that, in the end, even the act of amputation was one of these incredibly powerful gifts that I received from that experience, because I was smiling as I'm going through that ostensibly horrific act to be cutting through my arm and, yes, it made the sensation that I felt being trapped by the boulder now feel like a zero on a new scale of 10, that that was this incredible euphoria, also because of what I was doing to get myself out of there, to give myself a chance to take a step out of what became my grave and back into my life again. That that is again the potential that boulders have within them. And there's a line Shakespearean that nothing is good or bad so much as what we think of it. Nothing is good or bad so much as what we think of it, and that's the idea that our minds, the choices we make, are our power and they are the most powerful tool that we have when it comes to facing our lives. It's the meaning we put behind something, the meaning we put behind something. So for me to look back and be able to say on day two, when I was out of options to get myself free, that I knew that I couldn't cut my arm off because I wouldn't even survive making it back to my truck, let alone driving out of the desert, I'm like why did I have to buy a stick shift, that I've got all of these options that have failed to get me out? I can't carve through the rock. I can't lift the boulder, even with all the mechanical advantage systems that I've built with my ropes. I can't wait for help. No one's coming because no one knows where I was. All of it means that I'm going to die here.
Speaker 3:But what do I do in that moment that the boulder gives me is to understand. I can get my camera out and I can say goodbye, and I talk about that as a gift, because what it did was. It connected me with what was really important in my life, at a time when I mean, could you be more isolated in the, in the universe? I don't know, maybe here's those of all the teen astronauts standing on the back side of the moon that eventually made their way home, but like to be out in this most remote desert, in the bottom of a hole, where no one's going to find me until I'm a skeleton, and yet to be able to turn on my camera, look through that video camera's lens and then connect with my loved ones my mom, my dad, my sister, all my extended family, my closest friends, and be able to say these incredibly important things I love you. I'm sorry that I'm leaving you.
Speaker 3:Thank you for everything that you've given me in my life, that those words, those connections, that that brought me into this place of being filled up with love. And there was no room for despair, because I just felt gratitude. That was an incredible gift to me and I've used it many times in my life since then, intentionally, because I learned that lesson you cannot simultaneously hold profound despair and profound gratitude in your heart at the same time. They displace one another and you practice gratitude, you say thank you, you go over the it's like a thanksgiving time and to understand what it is that you've been blessed with and that that, to me, picked me up. It gave me the strength, the courage, the determination, the perseverance, the resilience, everything that I was, and it was there for me because of that rock showing me what was what was truly important in my life.
Speaker 3:It was not a list of my achievements and accomplishments that went on to that video camera. It was a will and testament, in a way, but the primary service that it gave me was the ability to know that my loved ones would be on the other side of that lens watching that, even if it were after my death. But that that's what showed me what I had to hold on to and what would fuel me over those coming days. It certainly wasn't just a few cups of water that I had in one of my Nalgene bottles by that point. It wasn't the little bit of my two convenience store burritos that I had left in my food supply by the time I became trapped. It wasn't the inadequate clothing. It didn't even have a jacket for the 40 degree, 38 degree, 36 degree nights that I'd be shivering through. What was going to keep me going was this connection to what was important in my life, and what I learned was that it's it's loving relationships.
Speaker 2:Amen to that. Thank you for saying that. Do you think, aaron, if you wouldn't have had that little video camera with you, what would that have changed for you?
Speaker 3:I think I would have found another way to have achieved the same, I guess, process. Maybe. Maybe I would have taken my knife and started etching a letter to my loved ones into the wall of the canyon Maybe I had some paper with me that I could have figured out how to write something to them or have simply taken pictures on my other camera. I would have figured, been through the prayers, that I, that I also I used that as a tool to connect myself with greater energies in the universe, and that that I think that could have sufficed as well. It's something that we are, we are these energies, and we forget on our daily experience that this tends to be fairly superficial those moments when we can take a pause and remember to breathe and to connect with our presence and to come back to something that's really rooted and grounded in in the spiritual reality of our, of our existence here. And yet, you know, we we forget to do that or we get caught up in myself, I'm not immune to that, but those kind of communications that happen energetically, let's say, rather more than physically, that that's, that's no less real. And I, I had experiences while I was trapped of seeing my mom, uh, and hearing her and would come to find out, talking with her afterwards, that, yes, I was sitting on those stairs in our house and I was telling you the whole long that we were coming for you, that that I mean, it was almost telepathic, like that, you know something, something beyond. What I would say is like, oh, yeah, I, I believe in psychics, I believe, like, yeah, I'm. I think I find myself more on the skeptical side of things, like I'd like to have some proof that that exists. And yet, yeah, that was, in a way, it was a personal experience that does provide proof that we are connected in ways that we don't always see until enough gets stripped away and out of our superficial level experience to that we see something greater that's underneath it. That in the end, before I went through the final night of my entrapment, when I'd written my epitaph into the wall of the Canyon, I said my final goodbyes on the video camera that I had an experience and had a body experience where I was in a living room and I saw what I knew to be my future son and he came running over me. I scooped him up, I was dancing with him, this little blonde haired little boy, about three and a half years old in that moment, wouldn't be born for seven years from now, but at this day here he's 15 and a half. He's upstairs doing his online academy. We're going to go play lacrosse later in the afternoon.
Speaker 3:That he is a little boy who came to me and showed me that I was going to have a life after the camp and that I I have never had a more mystical experience in my life, that something that showed me very clearly, uh, how we are connected in love through, like, across time, across distance. That it's, um, you know, the, the wormholes of our, of our spiritualities that bring us to be everywhere and anywhere, and and that's, that's, and that's something that served me. And also today I can sit with and know our mortality, even with my dad being now on the other side of this, that we all come from some great pool of consciousness into this experience and then we go back to it and that pulsing, that breathing of our lives. It brings me peace to know that and to be comfortable with it. So, again, more gifts from this canyon, from this builder.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the question I would have for you. You were a mechanical engineer, obviously. You went to Carnegie Carnegie Mellon, I think. You went to CMU, yep. So I went to the other CMU central Michigan university, and in Mount Pleasant, michigan, and we'd go on. I played rugby in college so we'd go on rugby tournaments and our jackets always said CMU rugby. And at tournaments, anyway, we had so many people, oh you're from CMU, yeah, yeah, and they'd start talking. I'm like I don't think we're talking about the same CMU here. They were talking about Carnegie Mellon a lot.
Speaker 2:And we, obviously we have CMU. I don't think we ever played Carnegie Mellon in a game, I don't recall, but that would have been pretty cool. Yeah, we didn't have a rugby team, so your son plays lacrosse. What position.
Speaker 3:Yeah, he's an attack. I played lacrosse in college. That was my travel thing. I was also in the marching band.
Speaker 3:Okay so we would travel sometimes to support the football team Very goofy, silly experiences with all of that. But yeah, he's found his passion with all of that. But yeah, he's found his passion and it's something I, I just adore for him that at this point his sister plays lacrosse too. She's just about to turn 12 now, uh, so they're three and a half years apart, but that's, you know, anything he's doing, she's got to be in and doing it too. We, we go skiing and there's backpacking. She's's in scouts.
Speaker 3:So we were just up in the mountains a weekend ago and waiting out in the lakes and hiking cross country through wildflower fields and jumping, doing jumping photos up on the Continental Divide. Just so many amazing experiences with my kids that have come true because of that connection that I first touched on when I was. I was in those moments when it was, I thought I'd even etched into the canyon, uh, the death date of April 2003. And then, as I had this experience with my future son, and at midnight the clock rolled over and all of a sudden it was no longer april 30th but it was may 1st, and I even had to decide whether or not to scratch out april and carve into the wall may, because my epitaph is outdated now and and yet it was just the clarity, like, okay, that doesn't matter. But what I did know, know, what did matter was that I was going to see the other side of this experience in the canyon. And again, what gifts that that boulder gave me to understand the power of love, of these connective energies in the universe that I would get through. And so in the end, that final dawn gave way and I saw the sunrise that I said I wasn't going to see because of this vision of this little boy, that I was then so sure I was going to get home to someday to see him. And that's how, in the final moments I can say I was smiling as the idea comes to me that I don't have to use the knife to try to cut through the bones in my arm. I can use the boulder and how it was holding me to gain leverage and bend bone in my arm enough to break it as it snaps in its cap gun kind of starter pistol.
Speaker 3:The sound effect is crack in the canyon. And yet this smile gets even bigger because I know I've solved it. I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna get out of here, I'm gonna get home, I'm gonna hug for my mom, I'm gonna see that little boy. And, and I still recall how, all of a sudden, this, this ecstasy, resolved into the understanding of oh, wait a minute, there's another bone there. Oh, and so that, do it again.
Speaker 3:And that's a crack that had broken the same spot, and this mechanical you know, engineer, as we mentioned that that mind took over and it was just okay. What's next? How do we overcome that? Put the tourniquet on, keep cutting. There's the nerve. Yep, this is just going to happen now. And and yet, as I sucked in my breath, as I severed that nerve and I resolved, as I exhaled and I was smiling, the biggest smile I've ever smiled in my life. I was getting through this, I was going to finish it and I had to stretch my arm you stretch fabric in order to cut through it, put a little tension there and then that tension released, I stepped out of my grave and into my life again and the smile was.
Speaker 3:I felt the pain there, but it was the possibility that was far more important, the possibility of everything in my life coming back to me, that I had the chance now. Maybe it was a one-in-a-thousand chance, but that it was still a possibility that I was going to be able to get out of there. I did everything I had set out in my mind. I know which direction. I'm not going to head back to my bike. I'm going to be able to get out of there. I did everything I had set out in my mind. I know which direction. I'm not going to head back to my bike. I'm going to head for my truck, continue down canyon. Maybe I come across water. I'm going to get to the big drop propel. I bring my rope along. I've got my arms slung and then tourniqueted to my just doing the basic first aid that I could.
Speaker 2:Along the way, though, I even stopped and I took a photo before I left the boulder, and I said thank you out loud in that moment.
Speaker 3:You have to have that picture framed somewhere, don't you? It's definitely. What I actually have is a replica fiberglass model of the boulder sitting here in my office that I'm looking at as well from the film set from Modern 27 Hours. It's got James Franco's blood on it Because, yeah, the gratitude I have for that rock, it showed me what was important to me in my life, what was possible for me in my life, what was extraordinary about being alive and all of that. That's this gift and, again, the choice I made to say, yeah, I walked out of that place but I didn't leave. I didn't lose anything. I left something behind, but I only gained from that. This is the choice that I made. This was not horrific, but rather the best thing that's ever happened for me. And yeah, it was far from over.
Speaker 3:I did, on my way out, hike for almost five and a half hours. I covered six and a half miles of ground. I run out of water that I found at the bottom of the big drop rappel. I I'd been moving, just staggering my my way, but I lost over two liters of blood during that time. I hadn't slept in six days, so just the exhaustion. I'd lost over 40 pounds. I had just nothing left.
Speaker 3:And yet, as I come to the moment where I'm having a heart attack, from my body shutting down and there not being enough blood to pump in my system to get oxygen to my brain, boom, it's happening. And what I realized is the roar that is building in my chest, that is somehow expanding outside of my body, and I look up and there's a helicopter that passes by and circles around lands and plucks me out of the equation of that connection and love that I had had with my family through the video cameras that this was my mom's projection of manifestation of her love, as she had figured out how to motivate, search and rescue to go find me, not even knowing what state I was in. But they tracked me down and plucked me out of that canyon when I had minutes left to live. Tracked me down and plucked me out of that canyon when I had minutes left to live in. That helicopter had minutes of fuel left in this miraculous synchronicity that gets me to a hospital before the helicopter crashes or it bleeds to death and I I'm here because of that miracle.
Speaker 3:That's that's to me. The other side of this is that it's it's these again, these big energies that are out in the universe and how, how they? You know we were these little particles that ping around, bounce off each other and that we're connected through these fields of force. That that, yeah right, that's how miracles happen it is.
Speaker 2:You know, you would have told me this 15 years ago I was the biggest skeptic of manifestation or energy, and then I realized, probably 12 years ago, that this is. I based my whole life on it. Now that it's now, you know there's so much science behind it I mean, it's not psychobabble, bullcrap. There's science behind this as well, that we are, just, we're energy, and energy really never dies. It just goes from one form to the other and we can pass energy. Every time we communicate, you and I are passing energy on with each other and we're there for it to the audience when this goes live. So people don't understand that. They understand Wi-Fi signals, telephone signals, radio signals, but they don't realize we give off signals so often and I think there's nothing more powerful than that now. So I went from a complete atheist on these ideas to a complete believer of just energy being the sole controlling force of our universe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, the nice thing is that it's like it doesn't require you to believe for it to be true either Right Facts and science just are, and so you can choose to, I think, leverage it and use it and be aware of it, and that's I think it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 3:It is, it is my experience and certainly feels how I'm, why and how I'm here, and so I'm glad, I'm glad to hear, yeah, that that resonates for you and I hope that it does, yeah, for the listeners here too.
Speaker 3:It's, it's something that's so much bigger than us and that we, yeah, we have free will, we have choices to make, and also that it's, it's a beautiful thing that it's not just up to us either, and that that was something that brought me great peace.
Speaker 3:Uh, and I want to share this on that line of thought, is that, as I came to accept my situation and in my entrapment, and as it applies to just about any other Boulder that I meet in my entrapment, and as it applies to just about any other boulder that I I meet in my life today, that that acceptance is where we can come back to the peace that we have in our lives. That it's when we resist. What is when we resist the the will of the universe, when we resist the, the power of the energies that are around us, that that's where we create dissonance in our lives and agitation, even inflammation. It's something where, when we can align ourselves with what is with the will of the universe, that's where we have peace and we come back to something that is our natural state of being.
Speaker 2:I know this is a lesson. I know I have to learn. I've learned it over the years more and more, but I'm still not there. The whole idea of acceptance that's always been a struggle for me is accepting things where I'm like okay, I mean like you in that canyon.
Speaker 2:When I first watched the movie in whatever 2007, 2008,. Whenever it came out, 2010, whatever I saw, I didn't see acceptance. I saw a man with an internal fight. But then, when I watched it last night so this is now 15 years later, whatever the time frame is I've matured, I've thought more. I did see a man because I never really paid attention the first time to you James Franco playing, in this case, doing the videos I didn't really make. That didn't connect with me, but then it did.
Speaker 2:Last night I was lying in bed with my iPad watching it and I thought this is a man right here who just knows that this is the end. And I asked myself that same question that you mentioned earlier what would I do in this case? What would I say? And so, in order to get to that point, you almost have to have an acceptance that this is probably the end. And if that's the case, what am I going to do, and the messages you delivered to your family, to your sister, to your mom and your dad, were I don't think you can go there until you had that acceptance.
Speaker 2:You know, because we always want to say, well, it might change. It might change. Well, that's good to have hope, but there are some things we just have to accept. You control what you can control, you influence what you can influence, and you accept what you have to accept, and if you can live life by that simple rule, it gets a lot easier. Trust me, life is still not what I would call easy, but it's a lot easier than it was 10, 15 years ago for me, when I was all about what can I control? I don't want to accept anything, but you hit the nail on the head. When did you realize? So I would think, though, aaron, that obviously, when you broke free from the boulder, you felt free. Was there a moment when you knew that I'm going to live now? Was it the helicopter, or did you feel that way all the way out of the canyon and when you had to rappel down and you were walking?
Speaker 3:towards your truck? Was there a moment? No, I was just committed to the process. If I knew something, it was that the odds were stacked so heavily against me that I was not going to make it all the way home, that I was not going to have the life that, that the possibility of that was propelling me, but there was. There was, uh, much closer to a certainty that I was not going to actually survive my escape. Now, that said, by the time, yes, the helicopter arrives, it gets me out of there. I make it to the hospital. I walk into the trauma room. The anesthesiologist shows up with this incredibly large needle that my eyes made it look like it was a battering ram and the morphine goes in and, boom, fade to black.
Speaker 3:But when I came out of that and what I didn't know is I'd been transported to Grand Junction, colorado, from Moab, utah, that I'd undergone 15 hours of surgery, had seven liters of saline dripped into me to replace the fluids in my body, of saline, uh, dripped into me to replace the fluids in my body. That all of this and I come to and all I I know is that, wait a minute, I, I'm in pain. That means I must be alive. And that was when I knew, okay, I'm here. I might not be here for long, but i'm'm here. And it was the same sentiment I had as I was escaping the canyon. Within about 45 minutes of freeing myself from the boulder, I was down at the Big Drop Repel and I lowered myself 65 feet down to the continuing canyon, where it opened up out of the slot canyon and it was now more of a box canyon 100 feet wide and hundreds of feet deep. Uh, that that was where I took my a selfie of standing there with my amputated arm up behind my shoulder and, uh, looking into the camera, it was just to say I'm still here and and so much of the way it's that, that's enough, it's.
Speaker 3:And I know you mentioned about the role of hope and I, I, I think we think about hope being a good thing and yet I it. Also, I think we have to recognize that it's the flip side of fear, that it's about putting ourselves in a position of thinking about a future experience that we, we are afraid of having, or that we hope by having, but it's still not this moment, and this moment is the I'm still here and that's the declaration. It's all we have and I'm yes, I think the nuance that you described around acceptance and control, and hope that all of that is true, to let go of control where we're deluding ourselves and yet still to exert our will as we can, to know that, yes, acceptance of what is right now does not mean that we don't have a role to play in creating a future of what will be that could be very different than what is right now. There's certainly, I think, layers and perspective to take there. This, this idea that where, where, where I was was just staying in that moment of moving myself through, uh, without knowing that I was going to live, knowing that I was going to see that child, uh, I didn't have that, knowing I just knew one more step, aaron, one more step, one more step, aaron, one more step, one more step.
Speaker 3:And then, as I'm in the hospital and like I'm in pain, I must be alive, okay, I'm alive. And there then my mom walks in the room and I, I'm alive, and she holds my hand, and we're crying, looking at each other and sobbing, and that it's like, finally, through all these tears, where I can say I love you, mom, I'm sorry, I love the same things that I said on the tape. But it's looking into her face and her tears dropping down on me. She's squeezing my left hand so hard I thought I was going to lose that hand too. And she says it hadn't been a broken leg that's kept you out in the desert all this time. I hadn't been a broken leg. That's kept you out the desert all this time. I swore myself driving you you were gonna have two broken legs before I was done with you. I'm just like, did I mention I love you? I'm sorry, and how?
Speaker 3:It's like it's all just in that moment that there was never and and it was a good thing because, like, oh, I didn't know, uh, but come to find out. Yeah, I gave myself a bone infection because of the unsanitary tools and conditions that I was operating in. I almost died from that in the weeks following the rescue. So many surgeries and just the whole miracles of science and modern medicine that it took in order for me to survive the aftermath of my experience, not just the experience itself, and so that, yeah, I guess I keep coming back to this idea that there was never a knowing, there's never a guarantee. You know, none of us know, we're going to walk out the door. You know anything can happen, and and so often so many things do happen, so that it's just to to know that it's this moment, it's the connections that we have, it's it's not necessarily a promise that there's anything more than this, and and yet we, we can live within that presence and know that that's.
Speaker 2:I agree with you on that. When I do these podcasts so often, I love them all and I've enjoyed every single interview. There are a few that I feel like were timed perfectly for me, and this is one of those ones. I needed to hear this today. What right now? So you've gone through this. Now you have. You have a 15 to 12 year old child. You have a 15 year old son, 12 year old daughter. What is a win for you in life? What would you say, is a thing that you say okay, that's that, that's a victory.
Speaker 3:Right now I feel great about that I mean especially for having kind of like a tweener, and it's the, it's the little things of like. When, when my daughter, like, comes around to my door to give me a hug before she goes to the school building, even though, like, some of her friends are still outside and can see her do it, it's about my son, yeah, asking me to go and, like, throw around the cross with him, even though, yeah, he could be calling his friends to set up time with them to go do it. I look at it as those winds that come along from the relationships. We talked about age and about health, and I think one of the gifts that my body is giving me right now is this maturity to understand, whereas I would have taken a health challenge as something to overcome and to just dig deeper and still go out and do everything. Now it's this gift and this lesson that there's times to time to, there's times to slow down, there's times to heal. That, uh, you know it's, it's finding the, the victories in, in something that otherwise can look like oh, but it's.
Speaker 3:You know, a younger version of me would have said, but that's, but that's defeat, like, that's failure. That's not doing. How is not doing a way of being that's better than doing, and so there's a lot of wisdom. I think that that can feel like a victory where, oh, I am growing. I'm not the same as I was five years ago, 15, 22 years ago.
Speaker 3:That's what looks like a win in my life, and, of course, so much of it comes back to relationships, about times even where it's with my co-parent relationships, and where I remember to de-escalate rather than escalate, to where I elevate the value of having peace over the value of holding someone to account or getting my way or you know any of the other things that can feel like a defense mechanism or a success strategy until they're not, until you realize the consequences of that, and then you say, oh no, there's something that's more important than that for me or for my kids. So, yeah, there's a lot of things that look like wins and victories that I think, especially 10 years ago, I would not have said that that's something that I would not have heard myself say the same thing.
Speaker 2:As you were talking about that. That's what I was thinking about. What would a win look like for you 10 years ago? Because I'm the same thing. I, as you were talking about that. That's what I was. I was thinking about where. What would a win look like for you 10 years ago? Because I'm the same way, aaron, my, my wins. I do it every morning. Well, six mornings a week, I, when I get up one of my, I have a really weird strict morning routine for about an hour and a half. I don't veer monday through saturday and or I'm sorry, uh sunday through friday. I don't do sats, and one of them is I write down five things that I'm grateful for at that moment Beautiful.
Speaker 2:And right before I journal, and just going back, if I went back to the last three days of this week so far, I guess, yeah, the third day. One of them was my son and I hiking on Friday or Saturday and right in the middle of the hike I was rocking. He just turned around and gave me the biggest bear hug and I'm melting his arms. I started tearing up or it was my. One of them was my grandson getting up and coming. I'm staying with my daughter right now for a couple of weeks and he came coming downstairs in the morning at six, 30 or seven o'clock and jumping on my lap, you know, wanting to watch something on my iPad while he has his breakfast in my arms and, just, you know, curled up.
Speaker 2:And it's those little things that are wins now. And 10, 15, 20, maybe 20 years ago I don't know, that may not have been. You know, my wins were like let's get. I got to get more clients, I got to get more speaking engagements and those are all just icing on the cake. The cake is the little things that, like you said, and it always comes down to relationships. I would say 90% of the things I'm grateful for. Sometimes it's a warm cup of coffee in my hand or the birds singing outside. But you know they're all these. Most of them are, like you would see, seemingly minor things that you might just go through life and they happen to you, but you never take note of them until you actually stop and think about them and show gratitude for them.
Speaker 3:The little things are the big things.
Speaker 1:They sure are.
Speaker 3:And I think, whether you're a parent or, yeah, as a spouse, a partner, a leader, that reflection and consideration of the importance of connection and relationship, that it boiled down to it I even said it on the video camera as I was trapped and as I was reflecting about the meaning of life that I expressed that it's not about what you do, aaron, it's who you are, it's how you relate, it's how you love it, it's how you interact and that is our legacy, that that is the gift of our presence to others, that that's how our consciousness, that's what we're here to manifest, to bring out, and I think we all can at least set a goal for ourselves to be kind in that, to to be caring, to be compassionate, to be empathetic, and that that's wow.
Speaker 3:Like what a gift of adversity is that it's not just that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but it also has the capacity to make you softer, so that you can connect with others through the traumas that they've had in their lives and you can be there for one another. That that that's as I've heard it said. That's what we're here to do. Is that we're all just walking each other home.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to share this with you before we wrap up, aaron. So right now I'm going through a fairly difficult emotional time for the past month, and what I would typically do in times like this it would and I've only gone through a handful of these in my 58 years of living is I would typically feel sorry for myself for a little while. I would kind of slack off a little bit and just get lost in the misery for a couple of weeks. Well, this time I decided to go the opposite approach. I said I'm going to double down on finding happiness and seeking happiness within me, and what that has done for me is I've worked out harder. I've eaten better. I've eaten better, dramatically cut my alcohol down.
Speaker 2:I have been reading more, journaling more, more gratitude, reaching out to people more and saying, okay, I need help, you know, or I could use your guidance right now. And I really think it's not just coincidence that I'm talking to you on this day and I want to share with you the thing that you did, that energy you sent to me today, was you said something about I feel pain, so I must be alive. I like that a lot, but the one was I'm still here. That's such a basic, simple statement of all the worry that we might have, or all the things we're thinking about in the future or, you know, mistakes we made in the past or even problems that we're facing currently in the present. I'm still here is such a powerful way to reframe the mind to focus on that. One most beautiful thing that you have right at any given moment is that you're still here.
Speaker 3:So thank you for that. I appreciate that I really do, and that's enough. I think my overall thesis is that, yes, we don't get to control what happens to us, we get to choose how we respond. That when the boulders arrive, we draw on the strength and the power of the gifts of our relationships in order to find our resilience to transform those boulders, put that effort in to make them into the greatest blessings that we could ever receive in our lives. And along that journey it is enough to just still be here. I'm glad that resonated for you, Wow that did.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll wrap up now. I know you're a busy person. You've got to go to lacrosse here in a little bit. My son played lacrosse in high school. He's not playing his last year of college because he's putting a lot of time into his classes and graduating, but he played in college as well for three years. Oh awesome he was in attack.
Speaker 3:What did?
Speaker 2:he play, he played attack but now he played in college. He played midfield. He played, he was a middie in college. So one of the greatest sports. I coached it for five years, you know like youth lacrosse, but I never played it. We didn't have lacrosse growing up in my small town so I never played it. But all three of my step-sons, my bonus sons, played it in high school. One played it at the college, collegiate level. Then my son did as well and then my oldest bonus son was a high school coach for a couple of years in Grand Rapids, michigan. But family came, babies came, and now he's not coaching anymore. So it's been a part of my life for 20 some years, but never, never, played it. Even when I coached it I refused to pick up a stick because there's no way I can catch that ball on the stick. So I'm glad.
Speaker 3:I'm glad to hear it. I mean, I just I, yeah, I feel more connected with you through that too, and it is an incredible game and also there's a lot of incredible sports. There's so many benefits to being a part of a team and to having a passion like I'm so happy for my son. That's something that feels like a win in that regard of watching your child develop, to see a passion take hold and to know what passion has done for me in my life, where it's compelled me to the greatest heights of experience, and so I'm psyched. I think that's something for any of us who are looking for peak experiences or peak performance that you know that it comes from having that passion and that motivation.
Speaker 2:Amen. Well, brother, I want to take the time to thank you. Thank you for taking that experience you had and really you didn't just change your life, you've really impacted millions of people you literally have through the book and the movie, and the movie seemed pretty authentic and Les Stroud from Survivorman said it was one of the most authentic survival movies of all time.
Speaker 3:Les Stroud from Survivorman said it was one of the most authentic survival movies of all time. Yeah, I appreciate that. It was very authentic to my experience too. I wish I had gotten to go skinny dipping with Kate Mara. That did not happen. It's part of my experience, but maybe next time I'll hold out for that one.
Speaker 2:Is she the one that was on Schitt's Creek?
Speaker 3:Is she the one that was on Schitt's Creek. I know that she was in House of Cards in the first couple seasons there and has also done a bunch of other movies. Amber Chamberlain, also a great actor, playing Megan and Christy, the two women that I encountered early on that day in the canyon. And just as now, I take a second to say it's fun because every once in a while we get back in touch with each other.
Speaker 3:I've been in touch with them here in just the last week because we're starting to work on the documentary for a streaming platform that will be out next year or something like that a year and a half and it's pulling all the folks from the real experience to talk and tell our story of this for really the first time, having everybody together to, yeah, get this, I think, give this gift to even more people in the world who need it, that when it comes across, uh, someone's um, maybe, maybe a time in their life where they're experiencing darkness, and to shine a beacon, to remind people that we are connected, that we are so much more than that darkness, that there's something that's shining in us and that that's the resilience and the love and the power that we have to keep on with our being here, so I hope that it can do a great deal of work still to come. I've long known that this was not just for me or for my family, but that this happened for all of us, as a reminder of what we're capable of.
Speaker 2:Amen.
Speaker 1:Thank you, brother, I appreciate you you have been an amazing guest, you too, brian.
Speaker 2:I really do. This has been amazing for me and I know the audience is going to connect. I know we're going to talk for a few minutes after we're done recording, but again, aaron, thank you for being such an inspiring guest actually on the Bamboo Lab podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thank you, brian.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, of course, it's my honor. Folks, I just want to say I know this is an episode that's going to resonate so much for so, with so many, this is exactly what the bamboo lab podcast is about, probably the most, uh, I would say, um symbolic. Well, when I was looking to start this podcast three and a half years ago, this is exactly the type of message I wanted people to hear. So, please, I'm going to ask you to please rate and review us. Uh, please share this episode with three to five people, but, more than anything, in the next week or two, before I talk to you all again, please get out there and strive to give your best in everything you do. Please show love and respect to others and please show it back to yourself and please live with purpose and intention. I appreciate every single one of you listening today. Until next time.
