Rescuing Riley, Saving Myself (2 page)

What I didn’t expect was that by writing a book in the grand hope of changing the world, or the smaller hope of changing my readers, I too would be transformed. I have come to see myself, and my relationship with the world, and my relationship with my family, in a new way. A better, more balanced way. I have gone back deep into the dark canyon of myself, and I’ve climbed out, intact and improved.

To a great extent, I have Riley to thank for that. I am in no way grateful that he had to suffer the way he did, but I am thankful that I could help save him and for the lessons he’s taught me. When I think of what he went through, and how he came out the other side better for it, it gives me hope. I’ve wondered what would happen if Riley ever met the person who hurt him, but I don’t really think he would hold a grudge. What I see in him, every day, is how overwhelmed with gratitude he is for the life he has and how he refuses to let his prior suffering deform him or dim his dogged optimism. He doesn’t carry his pain with him, and so he seems to have healed without any scars. We humans have larger brains and better memories than dogs do, but sometimes that means we don’t let go of things the way we should—the way Riley has. Before I found Riley, there were so many things I could not let go of, but now . . .

But now it’s all in the book, and now that it is, I don’t have to carry it around inside me. I don’t have to carry it at all. I can live like Riley does, tail wagging, full speed ahead and moving forward, not backward. I don’t believe in fate, or think, as some people do, that everything happens for a reason. Practically speaking, ninety-nine out of one hundred things happen for no reason at all, but this book is about that one time, one day on the Colorado Plateau, when I walked into a canyon, and my life was forever changed.

I would like to warn the reader to be prepared. What you are about to read is uncensored. Parts of it will be raw and unflinching and might make you feel uncomfortable. My intention is to tell my story as I remember it. And, as my wife Michelle can attest, when recalling how I was abused, my memory is pretty darn sharp. I would think that’s true for most victims of abuse; their recollections of suffering are eidetic and palpable, so much so that sometimes we stand so close to our memories that we can’t see past them. I’m not going to pull any punches because you, the reader, need to feel and understand what being bullied is like, and what it does to people, especially children.

All I can do, in the end, is put the story in front of you. After you read this book, if it affects you, I hope you will make a decision to do something. It might mean literally intervening on behalf of a child you suspect is being bullied. It might mean attending a meeting at your child’s school on bullying that you weren’t planning to attend before you read this book. It might not make a difference, but then again, it might prevent a suicide for a kid who sees his predicament as insolvable. It could be that important. If you read this book and agree with me, I hope you’ll do something about it.

I
t was shortly after ten o’clock on a warm Sunday morning, on June 20, 2010. The news on television was mostly bad and depressing, bombs going off in Baghdad and an uncapped British Petroleum oil well belching black clouds of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It was Father’s Day, but I was not a father, nor had I ever had a reason to celebrate Father’s Day—or, for that matter, Mother’s Day. I’d driven six hours south from my home in Salt Lake City, Utah, because I wanted—because I
needed
—to get away from it all. And by “it all,” I meant “people.”

In that regard, I was successful. I could hardly have been farther away from people than here, navigating a crack in the earth, an hour from the closest town of Page, Arizona. I’d been moving at a good pace since breakfast, traveling down one of the Colorado Plateau’s slot canyons, a unique topography created by hydrological and aeolian forces that over the eons had eroded the red sandstone surrounding me. Slot canyons are like knife slices in the earth, and some can be hundreds of feet deep and only a few feet wide. The canyon I was in (and this was the reason I chose it) was a technical canyon, meaning it could not be traversed without the use of ropes and climbing gear: carabiners, a harness, ascenders, bolts, and anchors. I was traveling down from the head of the canyon, the first mile or so an easy stroll on a sandy path, but then the adventure began. Each time I had to set my ropes and rappel down, a skill I learned in the Marines, I increased the danger, because without my gear, I would not be able to turn around and exit the way I entered, or go forward beyond the next technical traverse, and gear can always fail. Humans are more likely to fail than gear; one bad bolt-set or hastily tied knot, and I could find myself at the bottom of a hole with no way out. I’d applied pre-mission preparation procedures drilled into me in the Marine Corps. I’d built in as many precautions as possible, brought more rope than I expected I’d need, and I’d given my wife, Michelle, my location and a “drop dead” time, meaning that if she didn’t hear from me by then, she should call search and rescue. Even that didn’t mean I’d be safe.

Michelle worries because I prefer to explore places like this alone. The risk I face, and enjoy, exploring solo has changed little since the days when mountain men and fur trappers blazed trails in this forlorn part of the globe—if you mess up, you’re screwed. A broken leg or even a twisted ankle can leave you trapped somewhere no one will think to look for you. Canyoneers must also concern themselves with flash floods, particularly in the secondary and tertiary canyons that feed into the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. In a wider canyon, if you have enough warning of a flash flood, there are often places you can run to where you may be able to scramble up to higher ground. In a slot canyon like this, there’s no way out, no way up without climbing gear, and no way to ride out a flood when constrictions amplify the force of the water. In the summer of 1997, twelve people were trapped in Antelope Canyon, perhaps the best known and easily the most traveled slot canyon in the Four Corners region, by a flood resulting from a storm ten miles upstream where the catchment saw an inch and a half of rain, with three-quarters of an inch falling in only fifteen minutes. Downstream in Antelope Canyon, it barely drizzled, a few drops falling, until, half an hour later, a surge of water ten feet high raced down the canyon, destroying everything and everyone in its path.

I chose to explore alone to get away from people and to test myself. I didn’t necessarily think that other people would either slow me down or annoy me; going solo simply meant having a more pleasant journey without any awkward moments with new partners or arguments about which way to go or how to set something up. The challenge is to be self-reliant. Some people find it difficult to be self-reliant. I have never had a choice. I am self-reliant to a fault, and if I could go back in time to reverse the course of events that have made me so, I would, but . . . I can’t do that, so I will only play the cards life has dealt me as best I can.

After my second rappel, I stopped to eat a snack and to rest, washing down a Clif Bar with a few gulps of bottled water. After my third rappel, a descent of perhaps twenty feet, I left my ropes in place and paused to examine the gear in my pack to see what I had left. Of the eight twenty-five-foot sections of CMC Static Pro 3/8” diameter climbing rope I brought, I had one section left.

I dropped my pack and headed down-canyon. I had Petzl ascenders and both locking and non-locking carabiners clipped to my Yates harness. My bolts and anchors and my DeWalt cordless drill were in the pack. I could come back if I needed them, but I was of the mind that if the next obstacle I reached presented too much of a challenge, I’d call it a day and turn around. At some point, the lure of what’s around the next corner is cancelled out by the trouble it’s going to take to get back, but whenever I stop for the day, it’s generally not with a sense of disappointment, but more with one of accomplishment. It’s that point when you think, “I’ve come this far alone safely; don’t push it.”

I walked about fifty yards down to where the canyon narrowed, the walls only a few yards apart, rising perhaps three hundred feet above me, though they curved and leaned and I couldn’t see the top. The sun was no longer directly overhead. It was noticeably cooler as I passed through shadows dark enough that I occasionally had to turn on my headlamp to see the smaller details. The streambed underfoot was sandy for the most part but, in the low depressions that held standing water before eventual evaporation, the sand had caked into tiles of mud that curled at the edges and crunched with each step I took. The sound brought me back to winters and springs, growing up in Wisconsin. I found it pleasing, similar to stomping on the ice crusted at the edge of the snow banks lining the streets in my hometown.

Ahead, I saw daylight where the canyon opened up again. I looked up. The walls loomed above me, as if threatening to collapse. I estimated that from where I started my day, I’d come about two miles, horizontal.

I regarded the sweep of the striated sandstone walls, red and brown, tan and yellow. It was beautiful, and I was glad I came. For a moment, I pretended I was the first man who ever set foot here. I chose this canyon from an old out-of-print guidebook because the description made it sound like a place too difficult to visit, meaning it would be untrammeled by day-tourists in flip-flops. I’d read where they’ve found large amounts of human garbage washed up on the beaches of deserted islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. For me, finding a candy wrapper or a soda can in a canyon I’m exploring was always more than disappointing—it felt like falling off the wagon, in a way, a setback in my ongoing struggle to be more optimistic about people.

A brief and admittedly amateur accounting of the geology of Utah can explain how the slot canyons of Southern Utah and Northern Arizona formed. At various times over the eons, the mountains in the northern part of the state, including the Wasatch, Raft River, and Uinta ranges, were the only part above sea level, and the rest was submerged. The warm seas encroached and receded over a relatively flat topography to the west of the Wasatch line and left thick deposits of sediments, including shale, sandstone, and limestone up to three miles thick. Much of that rock contains marine fossils. Eventually, around the time of the dinosaurs, the seas dried up, turning southern Utah into a vast sandy desert, and that sand became the red rock formations found today in the national parks. Land masses compressed and crashed into each other, creating faults and uplifts and folds and eventually the Rocky Mountains, with swamps and large, lazy rivers draining the coastal plains. Uplifts formed basins, which became lakes and lake beds. Then, about forty million years ago, widespread volcanic activity erupted, leaving thick blankets of volcanic rocks and lava and ash. About twenty million years ago, the part of North America west of the Rockies lifted up out of the sea to present-day elevations, land flowing east and west from the Continental Divide, and the water that had before flowed slowly in lazy rivers now flowed rapidly down steeper slopes, carving into the landforms and refilling the basins. In the high mountains, glaciers formed to sculpt the topography, and then the climate warmed up, the ice receded, and most of the lakes evaporated. Great Salt Lake is one of the last to do so.

The slot canyons of southern Utah and Northern Arizona are evidence of erosion as rainwater sought the shortest path to the sea after the final continental uplift. The most dramatic and most developed is, of course, the Grand Canyon, which is hardly a slot anymore, but at some point in time, around twenty million years ago, it started as one. Walking down into a canyon, big or small, feels like walking backward through time, as marked by the striations on the contoured canyon walls distinguishing different periods of sediment deposits.

Biologically, a slot canyon is a niche most plant and animal species find inhospitable. Very little sunlight reaches the bottom of slot canyons, and when it does, it doesn’t stay long. In the canyons that are the most popular with tourists, the best time to go if you want to take pictures is an hour either side of noon, when you can capture rays of sunlight striking the canyon floor, but it’s also the worst time to go because that’s when everybody goes. At that point, you can’t take a picture without taking a picture of somebody else taking a picture. Early morning or late afternoon, you can have the place all to yourself.

Without sunlight, little grows in a slot canyon, maybe a bit of moss somewhere below a shelf where it stays damp and shaded. You might see snakes, scorpions, stink beetles, black flies, and you can see quite a number of birds that build homes on the walls where predators cannot reach them, marked by smears of white bird guano striping the walls below their nests. You can estimate the high water mark in a slot canyon by where the birds build their nests. I’ve hiked in slot canyons where I’ve passed under logjam thirty and forty feet overhead, left by flash floods.

I walked and scrambled over fallen rocks for a quarter mile along a winding corridor, descending another fifty feet of elevation, until I reached what I knew would be my final rappel, a fifteen-foot drop over a ledge and down a chute leading to what appeared to be a somewhat deep pothole. Beyond the pothole, a rise of about five feet. What was on the other side of that, I couldn’t tell. I pulled myself up to the top of the ledge and looked down into the hole.

I saw something, and my heartbeat quickened. The astonishment I felt went beyond mere surprise. There was an immediate surreality, the way you feel when you wake up in the morning and you can’t tell where the dream you were having ends and the day begins.

I saw, unless I was hallucinating, a dog.

But that was crazy.

I tried to think of what else it could be. The creature had exaggerated pelvic and shoulder bones protruding from beneath matted black fur.
Maybe a baby calf
, I thought. Maybe it had somehow wandered far from the herd and had gotten trapped. I tried to think of where it might have come from. The closest town of Page, just south of the Utah–Arizona state line and the Glen Canyon Dam, was too far away. The landscape where I entered the canyon was more high desert than cattle or range land, but perhaps there was a ranch nearby, a fence down somewhere.