Keep Breathing

I drove 7000 miles during a period of three weeks this winter, which felt like the old days of driving around the country for climbing or speaking gigs and also reminded me that things aren't always as benign as they seem and sometimes turn out differently than expected.

The Trick is to Keep Breathing

I was driving home to Colorado from a gig in upstate Michigan. It was winter and the roads were less than ideal but not bad so I dropped by to visit my climbing partner and dearest friend in St Paul. When I left Scott's place the following day, he waved from the porch and gave our then-classic, send-off, "Drive fast, take chances," which had originated with Mark Wilford and his infamous rental car antics (if I recall correctly, he rolled two).

Somewhere en route I was grooving to the track, feeling the sub woofer massaging my lower back, and moving fast, four wheel drive and studded tires all around, and there was plenty of weight over the back end. The suspension on the brand new truck felt soft so I replaced the OEM shocks but hadn't enough time for a full upgrade before the road trip. Being an experienced, competent and confident driver, figured I could handle what ever weather or conditions might happen. The road through Nebraska was mostly clear, with the pavement semi-obscured by drifting snow. I crossed some intermittent sections slickened by blowing snow that had formed ice when vehicles compressed it as they passed but the studs and rubber held firm so I wasn't concerned.

Somewhere between North Platte and Ogallala I was moving at freeway speed and shifted to the left lane to pass a large truck that was slowing to exit into the upcoming rest area. When the left front tire hit the overlap in the concrete, a height difference between the right and left lanes, the truck began to oscillate, like the cab was teetering atop the chassis. I lost the back end and corrected, turning into the drift. The calm music kept me from hitting the steering wheel too hard. It didn't matter. My minor input was still too much and I had to over-correct in the opposite direction. This pattern repeated three times while I fought to keep the pendulum manageable and the truck drifted back and forth, covering the breadth of the highway. They don't call it "over correction" for no reason and the fourth oscillation went too far; I left the road sideways at 65 miles per hour. The drivable surface ended quickly, edged by a short, steep embankment, 10 or 12 feet down to the grassy field below. I recall seeing the lights of the rest area centered in the windshield as the truck and my point of view made three, slow motion rotations around them. I witnessed my own triple rollover at a speed that should have killed me, certain that I was watching myself die while I could do nothing about it, hands locked on the steering wheel. My foot never touched the then-useless brake.

There was no sound other than the song until the tumbling stopped in a field a few hundred feet from the small building housing the restrooms and closer still to the few idling semi trucks overnighting at the rest stop. As motion slowed, the crunching sounds of metal stretching and breaking caught up, as if I had outrun them. My ears were ringing and the CD player was quiet. The silence of the moment was shocking. My truck was upright and after some manual checks, I realized I was unhurt except for a gash in my forehead. A case of the books that I had been pimping at various events, and the point of the road trip, shot from the back seat into front, striking my head as the truck tumbled. The roll cage had worked. The airbags had worked — without breaking my arms or face. It could have been worse, a lot worse.

The front left corner of the cab was crushed — it had hit first when the truck made its first roll down the incline, windshield shattered but in one piece, and both passenger windows blown out. The topper was gone, my P.A. system and speakers broken and scattered around the dimly lit field. More importantly my tool box had broken open, its contents spread among the multimedia gear, winter travel supplies, and ice climbing equipment I had stashed in the truck bed. The first order of business was to recover the shotgun and shells — anything a State Trooper might find concerning when he eventually pulled up. There was enough light spilling from the restrooms and vending machines to recover the weapon and cartridges. I sanitized the scene, securing my handgun in the aftermarket, steel, center console lockbox before even considering a call for help. Dialing 911 did not guarantee that an officer who shared my values about the Constitution and personal autonomy would arrive in the middle of the night. It would likely be the opposite so I cleaned the area and prepared to act like I was all freaked out, overcome by events, just another victim. What a fucking charade and what a benefit — from having lived through some serious shit in the mountains — to have the presence of mind to make myself look like part of the herd.

Regardless, I didn't need immediate assistance so I called home first to let my wife know what had happened and that I was OK. 911 could wait. One of the truck drivers parked and resting had probably already called it in anyway.

It was 1998 and I didn't own a cell phone yet. There was a payphone in the rest area and I had an MCI calling card to cover long distance charges. I dialed the access number and punched in the code to debit minutes from my account, took a deep breath and phoned home. I was supposed to have arrived that night, late but intact, and now I wouldn't. With the truck totaled I wasn't sure how I would eventually get there but at least I knew that I could.

Later, when we were together, Lisa said it sounded like I was calling from another planet, that I was a different person. And that's how fast life can change. It could have been death. But instead I watched myself getting away with it, making a series of mistakes that — combined with a little hubris or well-founded confidence — could have killed me, or maybe should have. Who knows? I don't. But those three revolutions, the triple rollover, affected me, changed me. I wasn't any more grateful or thankful to be alive but the accident did create a new hierarchy, reorganized my values about who and what actually mattered. When all can be lost in an instant, well, the incidental and trivial hardly matter. Several people, some work, and some social demands tied to my public image shunted to the bottom of the list. In the face of mortality some things and some people matter. Most — in that time of my life and who I believed myself to be — didn't.

An officer from the Nebraska State Patrol showed up. He looked over the scene, recorded my statement, and said, "It looks like you have things under control, now. I'll call a towing service." With that he was gone so I sat down to wait. My half-ton needed a flatbed to move it because the front right wheel was folded under the chassis and would never roll again. The tow truck driver was cool, he knew he would be well paid by State Farm, and realized I wasn't an asshole he'd have to drive back to North Platte. I don't recall the details of our conversation, only that, as we drove, I calmed down, glided from a higher state of consciousness back to the mundane, the real, the solid. He dropped me at a Super 8 motel where I unloaded all of the gear I wanted to salvage from the truck. The rest of it, broken and ruined and strewn about the rest area, I supposed would be cleaned up by the highway department and dumped. Hell, who knows anything about the aftermath of an accident like that? I didn't. And don't.

I called home again and gave Lisa the details of the tow truck recovery and my location. She had already rented a minivan and promised to drive out from Boulder the next day. She was freaked out, maybe more than I was. The fragility of life was nothing new to her but the immediate nature of potential loss — very different from the lengthy term of her mother's cancer — felt vicious and overwhelming. I had assumed that my climbing, my career as a climber who was pushing the limits of the possible and had lost a number of friends before and while she and I were together would have acquainted her with the potential of instantaneous death and the emptiness in its wake but it hadn't. Or maybe she associated such loss with the mountains, and that me dying while climbing would somehow make the void less definitive, the loss more meaningful. A car accident however, was stupid, excision without meaning, incurred while trying to move from one location to another, nothing to do with striving for a higher ideal. I can't put thoughts in her head or words in her mouth. I can only believe that we humans place filters on loss, warming or shining to make it more palatable, easier to handle, when, in fact, we should do otherwise. "He died doing what he loved ..." Yeah, fuck that. Those are words used to mollify survivors, words to comfort and assuage ... and they are cotton balls, a band-aid over a leaking wound that will never heal. Avoidance. Evasion. Bullshit.

If you can't handle loss you shouldn't be alive.

If all you seek is comfort and reason you will be sorely disappointed.

It ain't like that.

The interstate miles passed quietly as we drove west, toward home, toward normalcy or the pretense of it. I remember some music but it was shallow compared to the soundtrack of the accident. I will never hear that song without it making me time-travel to 1998 when I lost control, which was the greatest transgression I could commit at the time. I thought I was in command, that the driver's seat meant I could steer, and decide, but the world reminded me such illusions are just that.

The interstate was a metaphor.

The base model truck was a messenger.

I was a passenger.

Believed I was the driver.

When I lost control it shattered the image I had about my life and my relationship to the world.

Eventually, I learned to deal with the broken dreams, the confrontation with self-delusion.

I'm still here, 25 years later.

And I often don't know why or how.

So I just keep breathing.

___________

I've been working on this essay from time to time for a year or two but hadn't felt it could stand alone without either more meat on its bones or context to offer some relevance. A friend drove from Salt Lake City to New Jersey for Christmas and texted me from Nebraska on his return trip, which reminded me of the event described herein. He said road conditions were good and I told him I would share a story of winter driving through Nebraska once I had edited it into a better condition. I didn't work on it then because I was about to drive from Montana to Washington DC and figured attention paid to a car accident that happened one winter 25 years ago wasn't good mental preparation for the drive I was about to make.

In 1998 when the accident described in this essay happened I was a decent driver, having logged many, many miles in North America and Europe, in both easy and very difficult conditions. By 2024 my skills and experience had accrued dramatically, my vehicle was appropriate for all manner of crazy winter conditions and I had stress-tested it several times on the Utah-Montana run; my confidence was solid, and proven. I admit that I have gotten away with plenty on the road, and been remarkably fortunate. I still am.

Driving east was fine. I was alone and apart from a 100-mile section in South Dakota, the pavement was dry but the forecast for the return trip was grim. On one hand, the two big storms, one coming up the east coast and one moving across from the west would change road conditions, and on the other, Blair and our new puppy would be with me so the responsibility was heavier. After picking up the nine week-old deerhound in northern Virginia we fled west, reaching Charleston, WV the first night and Iowa City after a long stint the next day. The storm hit that night and driving on I-80 was strongly discouraged. But those warnings are for the mean, the average, and while I don't believe I am special I do know what I have done and survived, and how to handle things an average driver in an average vehicle might not. So after some deliberation we decided to try to get further west, through and past the trailing edge of the storm. We need only cover about 150 miles to be in the clear, and of course, we could pull off at any time if conditions were too heinous. Easton peed one last time while we loaded our bags in the FJ then we buckled up and headed out.

The first few miles were encouraging. It didn't seem too bad but thereafter the surface and visibility worsened. Sedans were off the road everywhere, and the further we drove the more semi trucks had wrecked. Some were benign slide-offs, others had jackknifed and were facing the wrong direction, hemmed in by destroyed but effective guard rails. Further on we encountered more multi-vehicle wrecks but very little EMS presence and only one or two highway patrol cars. The tension increased with every single wreck we passed. We had been more or less alone on the road, with no one else to avoid or overtake until we reached the tail end of a line of passenger cars and semi trucks moving around 40 miles per hour. I didn't think conditions warranted the pace so shifted to the left lane to get around. The surface in that lane had been recently plowed and it was fine but the line of vehicles was long and bunched together with no gaps that would let me sneak back into the right lane. I doubled down and increased my speed to get past the slower vehicles as quickly as possible. We were going about 60.

The plow had pulled off and suddenly the left lane was covered in six or more inches of heavy, wet snow. When my left wheels hit it the friction sucked me off to the left, exactly as it had done to the SUV hung up in the cable fencing in median ahead of us. We were slightly in front of the leading semi truck in the right lane, approaching the immobilized SUV rapidly. I kept my foot on the gas, feathered and pressed and released pressure while gently steering back to the right to keep the heavy snow from dragging me off the pavement. I couldn't correct too hard because if the tires caught exposed pavement we would shoot right in front of the semi. I watched the immobilized SUV while also watching the semi's headlights in the right rearview mirror to see whether it was gaining or fading. Fuck, we were right in the kill zone if anything (more) went wrong. Blair's face was calm but tight and she was holding Easton hard, her arms like a seatbelt. I kept on the gas, accelerating more, trying to pull us into better conditions. All I could hear was the sound of the engine, whatever music had been playing was silent to my ears. I was pretty sure we were fucked but also couldn't give up, it was a struggle that finished with success or, likely, death. Blair later told me that the SUV's occupants were outside, on foot, and she thought we were about to kill them. I never saw them, fixated instead on the car itself and the semi in the mirror. We missed the SUV by about two feet, sandwiched between it and the 18-wheeler. Quickly after passing the wreck the tires caught enough to pull us out of the deep snow and towards the center of the road. I knew the semi was coming so gave it a little more gas, lost the back end to the right, steered into the drift, corrected, accelerated more, which brought the rear end back left, and once we were centered up on the road I kept my foot on the gas, checked the headlights behind me and was relieved to see we had gained some distance. We weren't out of danger but the threat of being overrun by a semi truck was gone for now.

I held our speed and moved fully into the more clear, right lane. The truck and traction felt solid enough to put more distance between us and the line of vehicles behind so we kept at it. My shakes subsided coincident with the conditions getting even worse. Thereafter we spent a lot of time going 30-40 mph and Blair asked me to not pass any more trucks to which I replied, "Oh, yeah." I had almost killed her and Easton and didn't want to risk anything more. After those words my sole focus was to keep it steady, in control, and out of anyone else's way until we reached an exit where we could get a hotel room to wait out the brunt of the storm and the chaos it caused. It took three and a half hours to cover 80 miles and by the time we exited and could sit down at a nearly empty diner I was reexamining my tolerance for risk, for what I would accept myself and what I was willing to assume for any others I might be responsible for. I have much of what I was seeking in life now, and most of my chosen family was in the car with me, dependent on my competence. Thankfully, in the moment it was adequate and we got away with it. The event put a magnifying lens to my eye and my focus on the (metaphorical) rearview mirror.

It felt like the spring of 1991 when I decided to stop soloing, or another period when I quit climbing under seracs, and riding a motorcycle, and flying a paraglider ... all of those things seemed radical and dangerous, and eventually the season of life when I could justify that danger changed. Such change may have resulted from one too many close calls but I think it more likely that experience finally showed me how little competence and judgement affected the outcomes I previously believed I had controlled and could control. Perhaps the 'bank account' of good luck was dwindling and its balance could only be estimated.

The Nebraska wreck made me question many decisions and actions I took in the mountains and elsewhere, helped me to examine the real risks, and understand them. Looking back after the incident in Iowa makes me wonder how strongly luck was involved in many of the times I survived a bad situation, and I think its effect is significant, which does turn some long-held beliefs into illusions. I recognize how little control we can impose and that, just because an activity is common and 99% of the time results in a good outcome, our perception isn't always accurate. Even without factoring the ability or actions of others, driving is way more dangerous than climbing. We just pretend it isn't, and we do it every day.

I have more to live for now, and I do want to live — so I won't be driving across the Plains States in the winter again any time soon.

Stress tested, March 2023