Chapter 5 03／Day 1: Night shift

We know that the condemned prisoner, after all, was unable to resist in the end, and could only submit passively, almost gratefully, to the executioner's torture tools. The desert hermit, Edward.Abbie * I glanced at my watch. At 4:19 p.m., I had been stuck for an hour and a half, nearly half of which had been spent hammering cobblestones with my pocketknife.The light will stay on until about nine o'clock at night, but I've got the headlamp on my blue beanie.Although the headlight is not turned on now, I am still glad to have it on this daytime journey.As for my pocket knife, I usually don't take it with me on short hikes.And the advice in Kelsey's guide book about looking for spiders and snakes was also helpful, not that I actually came across anything creepy, but I followed the book's advice and carried a climbing torch.Now I drop it into the one-centimeter gap that crushed my wrist and illuminate the surroundings to get a closer look at my hand from all angles.

I'm trying to clarify a more important consideration, which is how much weight of the boulder is supported by my wrist. If I don't support much, then the amount of rock that needs to be removed is not much. The more the part of the hand and wrist supporting the rock, When I remove something that bears the weight, it slides down heavier. So there's a pretty good chance that the boulder will slide off in its entirety; that is, I'm setting a target that needs to be deftly moved, and how much that affects my chances of freeing my wrist can only be guesswork, so I simply Putting that question aside for now, I went on scraping and chiseling the boulder with my knife.

I try not to think about the fact that I'm trapped, it's an undeniable reality, but it doesn't help, so I focus instead on the face of the boulder above my right wrist and to my left, to see if I can find any weak spots .If I want to regain my freedom, the surface of the boulder must be smooth enough. Now I am thinking about the cracks in the rock structure. There is a slender concave surface above the bump about fifteen centimeters from the wrist, and the dividing line will just pass through. past.Just start with this line, hacking from the surface of the rock a dozen centimeters below the top, using my versatile seven-centimeter stainless steel blade against the rock to strike first, then mash, trying to get the most out of the way every time. Tap on the same spot.

Everything else: the pain, the thought of being rescued, and the accident itself faded, and I was taking action.My heart seemed determined to clear the block.Every few minutes, I stopped and looked across the entire rock face to make sure I wasn't missing any obvious landmarks. But progress is slow.I spread out the metal file in the tool and scraped the rock for five minutes.But only when you turn the file around and use the side to cut down the boundary line does it work slightly better than the pocket knife, the rock is visibly harder than this file, you can even see the grooves when you stop to clean the file It was full of little metal shards.While I wear out the blade, I have no effect on the rock.I looked at the rock again, noticed its uneven color, and learned that it wasn't technically a sandstone, but that it seemed to come from a darker formation in the Navajo sandstone.The rock formations also form the overhang ninety meters upstream, near the S-shaped log atop this lower slot canyon, where I descended before irretrievably falling into the sand two hours ago.

This is bad news, Alan.I thought so.That rock formed the platform because it was more resistant to erosion than the rest of the canyon.This rock is the hardest here. So I thought to myself, is it faster to cut through the rock wall?I decided to give the multitool a try and tap the wall above my right wrist.The knife flitted across the pink canyon wall, almost stabbing my own arm with each blow, but geometrically it never hit the right spot because my arm was just in the way. I paused for a moment to rest my left arm and hand, while I slapped the powdered grit off my right forearm, trying for a long time without seeing any change in the position of the rock.I went back and hacked the target line in the concavity of the rock.Tick, tick, tick tick, tick, tick.The sound of the knife tapping on the rock was pathetically weak, but it still echoed in the canyon.I was hoping to loosen the crystals in the rock, and removing a fragment the size of a dime would be an exciting breakthrough, but even this tiny bump seemed like an indestructible safe.Because no matter how hard I try, it just won't work.

Another hour passed, and it was now six o'clock in the evening, and the accident had been going on for a little more than three hours.The temperature is still warm, but according to the watch I buckled on the left shoulder strap of my backpack, it has dropped a few degrees from the high temperature of 19 degrees Celsius at 3:30 in the afternoon.I keep blowing the sand out of the knockouts to see if it makes any progress. I moved my eye closer to the rock, checking the ore properties of my target spot, again figuring that the crystal structure wasn't so hard.With so little progress, I have to think that the only way I can break free of this boulder at this moment is to strike hard with a geologist's pickaxe.

I feel like I'm in the deadliest prison, with only 650ml of water to drink, and it's best that my incarceration is short.Hikers travel in the desert, and a person must carry at least three liters of water a day.I rethink how long I can last with such a small amount of water?Probably until Monday, at most until Tuesday morning.Escaping is the only way to survive.Anyway, the race was on, and all I had was this cheap pocket knife, and trying to chip away at this boulder was like digging a coal mine with a child's toy shovel. I suddenly became frustrated with the tiresome work of chiseling.I mentally analyze how much rock I've chipped away, which is hardly any; and how much time I've spent working on it, reckoning it's over two hours;

My stress turned to pessimism as I considered my remaining options.I already knew that the idea of ​​rigging a fixed point to make a pulley block would not work.The rocky platform was 180 centimeters above my head and almost three meters away.Even with two hands, it is impossible to do the drudgery.Combine that with not having enough drinking water for a rescue, no pickaxe to crack the boulders, and no anchors, and I'm left with only one possible course of action. I said it slowly and loudly: You must cut off your hand.As soon as I heard the words, it made me quite disgusted.My vocal cords tightened, and the pitch of my voice changed.

But I don't want to cut off my hand! Alan, you must cut off your hand.I realized I was arguing with myself and couldn't help but laugh out of nowhere.It's crazy.I knew that this blunt knife would never be able to saw off the bone in my arm, so I decided to go on trying to chip away at the boulder and get myself out of trouble.Vain in vain, but still my best option right now. Knocking on the rocks, I pictured the sun always casting long shadows across the desert in the early evening.Next, the blue of the sky gradually deepened after an hour of pausing from time to time in my fruitless carving.My understanding of the engraved ancient geology on the upper right arm, and the moment when I stumbled, from Gary.Roach's deliberate cautionary words slowly turned into a motivating reminder that I could wear down this rock, perhaps enough to free my hands from their stubborn shackles.However, the stone quickly dulled my knife.I had to readjust the tool, pull out the file again, continue to work closer to the concave edge, and saw along the line I had carved.

As I tapped, I thought about my first visit to Utah.The first trip was with my family during the spring break of my freshman year in 1990.We went to Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon and Zion Canyon National Park before heading south to the Grand Canyon.I wasn't excited about that trip, and a few weeks before we left, all my friends were excited about their upcoming ski trip, or a trip to Mexico.and I?Instead, I went to Utah with my parents. Fortunately, our friend Betty from Ohio.Dahl was with us.She is the most knowledgeable person I know.Only the outdoors can surpass her love of reading, and these two qualities make her an excellent travel companion.She is also one of the most positive, insightful, and caring people I have ever had the honor of calling a friend.Betty contracted polio as a little girl in the 1930s and has been completely paralyzed from the waist down.I don't know if it was her battle with polio that made her so positive, or her positive thinking that allowed her to overcome the challenges of her paralysis.But Betty just finds light and goodness in everyone, and she loves everyone.She volunteers several days a week at the state prison, helping inmates learn to read and write and bringing her magazines to read with them.Being kind made her see their potential, and nothing else mattered.

Since catching polio, Betty has been using a forearm crutch every day, and a brace that fully supports the back of her leg.While she sometimes scoots around her country Ohio house on a scooter, dragging her legs and using her arms and hands to propel herself backwards, she has one specially equipped to Control the driving car with your hands. When we went to various national parks, she would also ride around in an electric wheelchair, which she called a pony, or my dad would carry her to nearby attractions, which weighed 40 kilograms, so there was no need for a pony up.When Betty rides a pony and encounters a hill that is too steep for the electric motor to push her up, my sister and I will scramble to push it.I won it at Bryce Canyon National Park, with Betty on the pony and me pushing up the last hill to the lookout.As I spread my arms, lowered my head to shoulder height, and looked down at the battery pack under the wheelchair, I heard Betty shout: Oh look, Ellen! I looked up and almost let her go, and we were in a vast landscape surrounded by hundreds of orange and pink sandstone towers that filled a ninety-one-meter-deep canyon, in In front of us fell straight down, extending about 800 meters to both sides of the viewing platform.I was in awe of it, and my fascination with the canyon goes all the way back to my passion for the landscape back then.I wanted to run down the canyon, touch the towers that seemed about to collapse at any moment, and follow every path around the structure until I got lost in the maze.I pictured myself standing on a tower called Thor's Hammer, and super-jumping to the top of the next spire, and from there to the next.When it came time to go, I went with a feeling of emptiness in my soul.Just at the age of fourteen, I don't know why I felt the way I did, but I met my calling in life, even though it was quite some time before I realized it. After two days of traveling, we arrived at the Grand Canyon at dark and had to get up at 5:30 the next morning to watch the sunrise from the south rim of the canyon.Because I checked in at night and haven't seen the canyon itself, I complained: why are we here?It was cold and I hated getting up so early.We took all the quilts from the hotel, and the five of us took a minivan and drove west for five minutes to the observatory.I slept in the backseat for a while, and almost convinced my dad to let me stay in the RV by myself while everyone went to the railing.But Betty beat me to it with her masterful pep talk: By the time you're ready to watch the sunrise, we're already sitting on the bench.My mom and my sister carried the quilts while my dad carried Betty to the lookout.In the car with the heat turned off, I felt so cold in just a few minutes that I had to follow my family and get under the blanket next to my sister. I had never sat down to watch the sunrise before, nor did I expect it to be so majestic.Standing in front of us is the wonder of the Grand Canyon, which is more than 60 kilometers deep and nearly 25 kilometers wide, extending from the tip of our toes to the forming rainbow on the horizon.In the mysterious chemistry of dawn, the rock formations inside the canyon change from dark brown and black shades to myriad rainbows of pale yellow, white, green, and a hundred shades of rainbow.At last, a bright crescent popped from the far desert cliffs at the center of the rainbow, and the canyon blossomed among a series of temples, buttes, canyons, and pyramids, and in the bright rose-colored light of the rising sun, The rock walls that surround the canyon create a strong color contrast. I didn't know it beforehand, but this sunrise was a dream come true for Betty, as she had the challenge of trekking thousands of kilometers to reach the Grand Canyon, a place she never dared hope to see. dream.Despite my nasty waywardness, she taught me what I had to learn, because I went on to many other spots just to see the sunrise.This wasn't the only thing I learned from Betty; her positivity and zest for life instilled in me so deeply that I felt a frenzy and urgency to experience and discover the world, almost obsessively. The degree of confusion. Now the Grand Canyon is a distant memory for me because I'm stuck under this hole and I'll miss the sunrise.During a break around 7:00 p.m., I put the knife on top of the rock where my scratched sunglasses lay.I shrugged, stretched my left arm over my head, shook my stiff hand, and sighed.Watching my left hand with palm and fingers swollen to almost twice its original size while retracting the fingers was horrifying, all due to the blow from the rock that shattered my left hand before the jump when the accident happened.The swelling has severely deformed the fingers, and even the knuckles are no longer higher than the connected bones as usual, and no blood vessels can be seen on the back of the hand, only the swollen balloon-like hand at the end of the arm.Perhaps the strangest thing is that I haven't felt any pain since the injury, but that's most likely due to the pain of being trapped, distracting me.There are still many things that are getting worse in front of me. Even my hands are so swollen that I can't be vigilant. I also noticed that my left thigh hurt more than my swollen hand, and after examining my leg under my shorts I knew why.The skin covering my lower quads was bruised, and there were multiple abrasions above my knees.These injuries were caused by trying to move the rock immediately after I was trapped.Some small clotting, but no continued bleeding.After the leg squeezed through the underside of the rock, the shorts were torn in five places, and the bottom right corner of the pocket had been torn open enough for me to see the bike lock keyring protruding through the cloth. It seemed important to keep those keys because if any miracle happened to get me out of here and back to the bike, I would still need to open the U-lock on the back wheel of the bike.I reached into my pocket to take out the keys and put them in my backpack, but just a second before I could pull my hand, the key ring touched the lining of the backpack, and I missed the key, and the whole bunch fell into the hole between the round stones next to my left foot .Damn it!I yelled.Not only was it beyond the limit of my ability to stretch, but worse, the key had slipped into a narrow crevice, and even if I wasn't trapped, it wouldn't be easy to get it back. I moved my shoulder to the left, stretching as far as I could, but only touching the top of the rock next to my left sneaker.I could see the faint glint of the jagged key in the sand hole, but my trapped wrist still prevented me from moving the embedded stone or putting my foot into the hole. That's when a vague memory of a TV show about a man without hands using his toes to type on a keyboard inspired me to come up with the idea of ​​reaching under rocks with bare feet to retrieve keys.Once the sneaker and sock off my left foot, I stepped back, stepped into the sand, and began digging up short twigs, plant stems, and other debris from the bottom left of the rock near the wall. Even with the headroom, the hole was still too small for my size ten foot, but I wasn't discouraged; the challenge had added significance.For the goal of getting the key back symbolizes the larger struggle against captivity.I had another idea. I retrieved a longer branch I had pulled from the rock. It was a sagebrush stalk, about sixty centimeters long, thin and brittle, but with a convenient bend near the thin end. Fold, maybe I can hook the key.I turned on the headlamp to make the hole brighter, and put the hooked end of the twig in.The twigs got to the keys easily, but when I tried to fish them through the gap, the twigs shrank and snapped.clang!The keys that fell back into the crevices of the gravel clanged and clanged. Damn it!I muttered. With the hook gone, I had to smack the keys with the broken end of the branch, but managed to flick them a few inches closer to my toes.My foot still couldn't quite make it to the key ring, so I inserted the branch between my big and second toes and put it sideways into the hole.With a headlamp carefully shone into the hole, I carefully moved the branch until it poked about five centimeters through the key ring.Using the tug, I used the branch to pull the keys out vigorously until they slid toward the end of the branch.Not quite out yet, but I've moved them closer to the opening of the crack so I can drop branches, dig in the sand with my toes, and curl my feet up to grab keys.I really didn't want to accidentally drop them again, so I lifted my left leg up until my left hand could touch the bottom of my left foot. It worked!This is my first win since captivity and it's so sweet!I put the keys in a pocket on the right side of the shorts and zip them up. With my shoes and socks on and no laces, I decided to try a new method of chipping rock with a pocket knife.I picked a rock the size of a softball from the pile of rocks at my feet, moved it over the top, so that I could reach it, and I stretched my body to reach the rock, which was not without straining my crushed hand, and then A stone weighing about four kilograms is placed next to the knife on the rock.I gave up on hitting the rocks with smaller stones because all available rocks were, like the wall, softer pink sandstone.Instead, I plan to use the rock to drive the pocket knife into the rock like a hammer and chisel. In preparation, I balanced the knife so that the tip would fit into the slender groove I had cut into the concave face of the upper right side of the rock, just above the right wrist, and let the handle lean against the canyon wall.Holding the stone hammer tightly, I made sure I hit the tip exactly, and gave it a small experimental tap with the hammer.I was afraid that the stone would knock the knife off and fall into the rocks under my feet, so I held on to the hammer as hard as I could, not having much confidence, but carefully tapping the knife a second and third time to see if it would work. Won't fly away, luckily it stays in place, but I have to hit harder. Okay, so I hit the knife with a stone hammer ten times as hard as before.Click!The rock exploded in my hand, breaking into one large, and half a dozen smaller pieces, leaving my hands full of gravel and spraying the pieces in my face.The force of the blow knocked the knife off, then hit the shorts and bounced off, landing on the sand in front of my right foot. It's useless, it's useless at all, I thought so, but fortunately, the discouragement passed away at once. I lick my lips and taste the gritty powder on my face that clings to the dried sweat.The knife had flown out of reach of my left hand, and nudging it with my foot would just bury it in the sand, but at least I knew I could get it back.Noticing the debris strewn across the rocks and on my right arm, I sighed, dropped the stone hammer to my feet, and focused on the knife.I took off the shoe and sock on my left foot again, stretched my toes to grab the multitool pliers, and retrieved it easily. Please, Ellen, stop doing that stupid trick.I blamed myself, knowing I would never use the hammer and chisel method again.Losing your pocket knife can be the last straw. For some reason, I had a hunch that the knife was going to mean the difference between my life and death.Even though I don't think it's possible to saw through the bones in my arm with such a blunt knife, I might need to use it for other things, like cutting slings, or cutting my backpack into a wearable jacket to keep me going at night. Be warmer. It was almost eight o'clock, and the breeze gently blew down the canyon.Every few minutes the wind picks up, blowing sand from the ledge above into my face.I lower my head to protect my face under the brim of my hat so most of the dust doesn't get in my eyes, but I can feel the grit sticking to my contact lenses.After huddling to avoid the breeze blowing six times, I found that I hadn't done anything or thought about anything;Back in reality, I stared at the sand and rock fragments strewn across my right arm.First with fingers, then with a knife, reaching into the narrowest place around the right hand to scrape away the sand, and then pursing his mouth, blowing the last grains of sand off his hand.The urge to keep my arms clean is ridiculous, but keeping them clean is one of the few ways I can exercise some degree of control over the situation. I returned to the digging as darkness spilled from the shadowy hole, turning dusk into night.I turned on the headlights again and picked a new target on the rock, a sandstone beige center surrounded by black hard mineral features.This point was five centimeters above my wrist, so I tapped carefully until I could carve out a small initial hole, allowing me to drive harder into the rock.I created a rhythm of gouging twice a second, pausing every five minutes to blow away the sand.Time passed, and I finally saw some progress when I saw a small salmon-coloured shard revealing itself next to a shallow groove carved into the rock.If I'm correct, I might be able to dig enough around this pale ore to remove a large chunk in one go. I toiled, focused, and by the time I realized it, three hours had passed and it was almost midnight.I've isolated the small fragment from the left, above and below, using a ditch about 0.3 cm wide in three directions, and I'm going to pry it off the rock.I didn't want to accidentally break the tip of the small blade, so I used a file from the multitool pliers instead.The file is not only thicker and stronger, but also more extensible.I inserted the tip of the file into the inwardly carved groove, pried the handle toward the rock, watching out for splinters that would fly towards my eyes, and held my breath.I felt the tool dig into the palm of my hand as the rock splinters burst open. Great!The rock ejected a coin-sized shard and landed on my trapped wrist, not quite as large as I expected, but I'm glad I'm at least making some headway with my strategy.Knocking off this piece, I've come across some softer rock, which is easier to chisel out.During another hour of excavation, I removed as much of the flaked stone as I could.Leaving the largest pieces that landed on my trapped arm, I concentrated them on the rock.As I made the smaller pits bigger, the collectibles got bigger, but I also became exhausted.The tingling pain in the arm was so disturbing to the mind that it kept me from being dizzy.I had to get myself out while I still had strength, and besides, I couldn't sleep if I wanted to.The biting chill of the night air and the occasional breeze inspired me to keep chiseling the rock for warmth.Whenever consciousness blurred, my knees and weight would pull on my wrists, calling my attention with instant pain. Maybe it's because I'm getting more and more tired, and a song is circling in my mind over and over again.It was the melody of the first episode of the movie "Ace Powers" that I watched with a certain roommate a few nights ago, but now there is only a line from the chorus of the movie's ending song, endlessly playing in my mind with. Yeah, not bothering at all, Alan, I said sarcastically.Can't you get another song from the jukebox and listen to it?It doesn't matter what tune I'm humming, what matters is that my mind can't get out of <Ace Powers>. After a break, I took the rope bag, harness, climbing gear, hydration bladder, and water bottle out of the pack, and strapped the big pack to my back for the first time since the afternoon.If I'm not mistaken, the material of this backpack will help me maintain my body temperature.I picked up the water bag and slid its empty bag along the pinned arm.The bag could only slide a few centimeters over my elbow, but at least it had three centimeters of padding because my arm was pinned down by the rock against the wall from wrist to mid-forearm.With the water bladder in place, my arms and most of my shoulders were able to insulate the cold wall.I took the rope out of the bag and, without unwinding it, piled it on a rock in front of my knees.The rock is lined with rope, so I can bend my knees and lean forward on the rock to relieve the pressure on my legs.Although I still can't completely relax, now I can change my position from time to time to stimulate the blood circulation in my legs. Just before 1:30 in the morning, I turned on the kettle for the second time and took a sip of water.I've been thinking about not taking a sip of water for at least two hours, but I'm putting it off until the middle of the night.It lasted four and a half hours first, and then another four and a half hours.The water quenched thirst as expected, the reward after waiting so long.But I am still worried. I know that the remaining 650ml of water will be the key to my survival. After thinking hard, I made a plan to drink a sip every 90 minutes, which is a way to give me basis for judging time. Fatigue left my knees tight, so I decided to get a chair to sit on to take the pressure off my legs completely.Putting on a harness is only half the puzzle.Stepping into the leggings loop, I pull up the waist belt and thread the thick strap through the buckle; with limited one-handed dexterity, I omit the final step, which is to wrap the strap twice.For the safety of mountaineering, this is usually a necessary action, but judging from my current situation, it is definitely redundant.Now on to the hard part: I took some of my limited climbing gear and mounted it on the rock above to make something suspend enough to support my weight. I stared at a crack in the rock wall on the left above my head, which was actually a gap between the rock wall and a rock with a diameter of about 240 cm hanging about 180 cm in front of me.This is the one that made the three-meter drop off when I stepped into the end of the boulder wall, and the one that I fell from when I stepped on the rock that now weighs on my wrist. I didn't take the time to look closely at the boulder earlier, but now I see two features that might help me create a fixed point.One was its slit; the other was a distinct corner, which, if I could put a rope, or run a sling around it, might perhaps serve as a point of fixation.But how do I make a blocker to throw into the crack and pull it down until it snaps into that corner?There are two options: Either take some carabiners and tuck them into a knot in the rope; either tie a knot directly in the rope, or take a portion of the sling and tie the knot itself to catch it.Either way, it's going to be very difficult to be accurate enough to cast the blocker so that it can slide into the crack and get stuck in that corner. Still, it's worth a shot.First, I untied my climbing rope of about nine meters, and tied a series of single-knot loops at the end to make a fist-sized obstacle.Stacking the extra rope on the rock, I threw the block into the crack, but it bounced off the wall.I learned that my clumsy throwing technique with my left hand and the nature of the rope itself, which would cancel out more weight than itself in the upward throw, were too mixed to be successful.I'd have to make a perfect cast, maybe it would be easier with a heavier weight of lead.So I decided to take three climbing shackles from my harness kit and attach them to a figure-of-eight knot instead of a fist-sized block. Each throw required two minutes of set-up, and the first round of twelve attempts failed to meet the standard, either popping off or slipping out of the crack before the shackle could snap in tightly.I stopped stacking loose ropes to minimize drag and my accuracy improved.In the next round of attempts, five times the carabiner dropped the shackle into the crack, but each time it came loose with a pull.I added a fourth carabiner ring to improve the shackles.What followed was a perfectly smooth lucky throw, the shackle hitting the wide opening of the slit and dropping into the corner, plus I pulled at the right moment and the shackle snapped. I test the grip, watching the shackle sink into the rock.I was worried that the sandstone corner would crack and the shackle would come loose, but luckily the metal loops were snapped tight one by one so the rock could take the pressure without a doubt.While the blissful waves of success wash over my weary soul, I tie myself to the setup by tying another figure-of-eight knot on the fixed loop around my wrist as I fall back.After adjusting the knots twice and tying the safety harness knots higher so that my weight doesn't pull on my wrists, I was finally able to lean back and take some weight off my legs.Ahhh, finally able to relax, my body celebrating the victory over the stress of standing for more than twelve hours straight. It happened to be three o'clock in the morning when I took a sip from the water bottle.My respite was disappointingly short, as after only fifteen minutes the harness restricted blood flow to my legs and I had to stand up again lest I risk leg damage or blood clots from sitting too long.The safety harness leg loops, which support my weight, were already giving my hamstrings pain long before the danger surfaced, so I established a repetitive pattern of alternating standing and sitting at twenty-minute intervals. Between 3 and 6 in the morning, during the coldest hours before sunrise, I took out my pocket knife again to carve rock.I can sit or stand chiseling rock, continuing to make tiny but visible progress between square inches.After several sips of water at 4:30 am and 6:00 am, I look at the stones that have been removed in the past fifteen hours of exhausting work, estimated at this rate, it will take me a hundred and fifty hours To cut and chisel the rock, so that the hand can break free.I felt depressed and knew I had to do something else to improve the situation. Just after eight o'clock, I heard a gust of wind blowing down from the canyon above, flapping three times, I looked up and saw a big black crow flying over my head, flying towards the canyon, flapping every time Wings, echoes will come down to my ears.On the third slap, it screamed loudly: croak, and disappeared from the window of the world above me.The crack in the deep canyon was still wet and cold at this time, but I could see the bright sky on the rock wall about 21 meters above, and there were a few scattered clouds floating in the sky.I survived the first dark night. At about 9:30 in the morning, a beam of light appeared behind me on the bottom of the canyon. The beam was so provocative, but it was still 90 cm behind my shoes and could not be approached.I hadn't quite warmed up from the cold nights yet, so longed for a little patch of sunshine on my skin.Five minutes later, when I stepped on the hole where the key fell, and stretched until my arm pulled to my wrist, there was enough beam of light toward my heel, and I could stretch my left leg back so that the sun Just warms my ankles and lower calves.The sun crossed the canyon floor, and I remained motionless for ten minutes, stretching my left leg alternately, then my right.Like a yoga pose, greet the day with this sun-facing stretch. The question of how many more mornings I have to last here crosses my mind, but I put it aside and enjoy the reassuring warmth of the sun on my calf. As the sun came out, my mood improved and for a while I felt refreshed.Deciding to put this positive energy to good use, I pulled out my knife and started another round of two-hour chipping.I reasoned about the chances of my being found, and when there would be a search for rescue from outside, but it looked bleak from any angle. Kristi and Meghan and I just met, I didn't show up and they probably thought I was just talking nonsense, and they didn't know what my truck looked like, so if they headed to the entrance of the Horseshoe Canyon trail, they wouldn't know about me Is the car there?Since I hadn't confirmed with Brad and Leah that I'd meet them at the Scooby-doo party, they couldn't have been aware that something was wrong.My roommates might be looking for me, but they don't know where I am.If they were worried about me and called the Aspen police, they wouldn't take action until I had been missing for more than twenty-four hours, which is Tuesday night. More likely, a manager at my company would call my parents and ask why I didn't show up for work.那時或許他們會找警察，詢問我的信用卡公司查我最近的消費紀錄，追溯我到莫亞布。思及我的消費紀錄然而，這想法讓我在心裡摑了自己一記耳光，因為我只有在亞斯本高速公路和州際公路交會的葛蘭伍德溫泉用過信用卡加油。在我開車前往馬蹄鐵前，我曾在莫亞布購物、加滿油箱，但我用的是信用卡還是現金？現在我記不得了。真希望現金消費紀錄也列入了尋找失蹤人口的程序當中。 如果警察通知國家公園管理處，而管理處在星期三開始做大致的搜索，也不太可能會立刻發現我的車子，因為搜救指揮官首先會把注意力集中在靠近莫亞布的區域。等到星期四他們開始地毯式搜索峽谷，及大老遠穿越藍眼約翰峽谷時，就已經星期五了。 要到星期五，某人才有可能從我上方三公尺高的岩石縫探出頭。 Friday. 但那還算是最早的。依公園管理員的班表看來，他們在週末會有導覽，所以比較可能找到我的日子是星期天，也就是從今天開始算起的一週後。 沒有水可以喝，人注定活不過一個星期，能撐到星期二早上，就夠神奇了。我不可能撐到星期五，絕對不可能。 到星期天時，我就會變成木乃伊了。