Brian Jones
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- Joined
- Jan 17, 1999
- Messages
- 7,560
Thought I'd relay a story and ask anyone if they've had similar experiences...?
It's a story about the "data dumping" that can happen after a traumatic event. It was a post-life and death survival situation. And, it was hilarious in this case.
Friends and I got stranded above the treeline overnight, at the edge of a cliff, with 60-70 mph winds hammering our tents and threatening to blow us over the edge. There were also bones, skulls and other pieces of prey animals, combined with fresh grizzly tracks all around us. I had accidentally slid down a glacier right above the cliffs at about 40 mph, crashing and rolling on the broken up rocks below, cracking a bone in my hip. We were up all night in side our tents, which we could only secure by piling low walls of rocks around, getting hammered by the winds, ready to be selected at any moment as an easy meal, and wondering if a blizzard was going to roll in on us and make it impossible to get up or down.
Luckily, I was first up the next day, Sun, no snow. Nobody eaten as a griz-snack. Nobody blown over the edge. Nobody had slept a wink. Imagine that SHTF adrenaline dump lasting all night and the next day without pause. We were forced to climb back up 1/2 mile of glacier, then back up 800 ft of cliffs to get out that day. We then had to hike and find a campsite to recover. All this with 70 lb packs on. That took awhile, as we decided to head back down below the treeline. We were not able to relax and release yet. We were so tired though, when we sat to rest for a moment, several members of the party nodded off instantly while sitting up.
At one point, back down below the treeline, a thru-hiker, half-jogging-half-walking, wearing his designer dolphin shorts, came around the bend, and said, "How are you?" with a smile, and without slowing down.
I opened my mouth, meaning to say, "Fine, thanks, and you?" But in painstaking detail, I literally and involuntarily regurgitated our whole ordeal in the span of the 10 seconds it took for him to walk past us.
Iwastalkingwithoutpauseortakingabreathandspewingforth - like a machine gun firing 6000 rounds-per-minute!
He looked at me with a forced smile, and like I had three heads, and politely responded, "Isn't that nice." Code for, "Not interested." And kept going, maybe even speeding up a little. Of course, the guy was being polite, and he fully expected the usual, "Fine, and you?" in response.
Instead, he got my life's story.
I paused as it dawned on me what I just did. I looked at my cohorts with an expression that obviously betrayed my thoughts: "Did I just tell that guy my whhhhhhhhhhhollllllllllllllllllllle ordeal in 10 seconds?"
After the pause, all of us staring quizzically at each other, my brother said, "Brian, he just asked you how you're doing."
We all exploded, fell over, laughing maniacally. One of my friends squatted down in place with his eyes squeezed shut, crying his eyes out from laughing so hard. We couldn't stop. The laughing/crying went on and on. It was a huge release of that adrenaline buildup we had been holding inside us.
I have never lived that moment down to this day.
Anyone else ever have something like this happen?
It's a story about the "data dumping" that can happen after a traumatic event. It was a post-life and death survival situation. And, it was hilarious in this case.
Friends and I got stranded above the treeline overnight, at the edge of a cliff, with 60-70 mph winds hammering our tents and threatening to blow us over the edge. There were also bones, skulls and other pieces of prey animals, combined with fresh grizzly tracks all around us. I had accidentally slid down a glacier right above the cliffs at about 40 mph, crashing and rolling on the broken up rocks below, cracking a bone in my hip. We were up all night in side our tents, which we could only secure by piling low walls of rocks around, getting hammered by the winds, ready to be selected at any moment as an easy meal, and wondering if a blizzard was going to roll in on us and make it impossible to get up or down.
Luckily, I was first up the next day, Sun, no snow. Nobody eaten as a griz-snack. Nobody blown over the edge. Nobody had slept a wink. Imagine that SHTF adrenaline dump lasting all night and the next day without pause. We were forced to climb back up 1/2 mile of glacier, then back up 800 ft of cliffs to get out that day. We then had to hike and find a campsite to recover. All this with 70 lb packs on. That took awhile, as we decided to head back down below the treeline. We were not able to relax and release yet. We were so tired though, when we sat to rest for a moment, several members of the party nodded off instantly while sitting up.
At one point, back down below the treeline, a thru-hiker, half-jogging-half-walking, wearing his designer dolphin shorts, came around the bend, and said, "How are you?" with a smile, and without slowing down.
I opened my mouth, meaning to say, "Fine, thanks, and you?" But in painstaking detail, I literally and involuntarily regurgitated our whole ordeal in the span of the 10 seconds it took for him to walk past us.
Iwastalkingwithoutpauseortakingabreathandspewingforth - like a machine gun firing 6000 rounds-per-minute!
He looked at me with a forced smile, and like I had three heads, and politely responded, "Isn't that nice." Code for, "Not interested." And kept going, maybe even speeding up a little. Of course, the guy was being polite, and he fully expected the usual, "Fine, and you?" in response.
Instead, he got my life's story.
I paused as it dawned on me what I just did. I looked at my cohorts with an expression that obviously betrayed my thoughts: "Did I just tell that guy my whhhhhhhhhhhollllllllllllllllllllle ordeal in 10 seconds?"
After the pause, all of us staring quizzically at each other, my brother said, "Brian, he just asked you how you're doing."
We all exploded, fell over, laughing maniacally. One of my friends squatted down in place with his eyes squeezed shut, crying his eyes out from laughing so hard. We couldn't stop. The laughing/crying went on and on. It was a huge release of that adrenaline buildup we had been holding inside us.
I have never lived that moment down to this day.
Anyone else ever have something like this happen?
