Rescuing Andy

My friend Trey did some work for this website called Yonder Journal which looks like what would happen if National Geographic met Field & Stream in an Alaskan hookah hut near the end of a long winter night that had left them both a little raw and vulnerable and … well … you know. In other words, it's awesome. I recommend it.

Reading through some of the stories there made me want to write about other adventures. I don't have many such stories to share (I live in Dallas for crying out loud) but here's one that's fun to tell.

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In the autumn of 2011, I climbed a Colorado mountain, sat on the ground with my back against a log, and stayed there for nine hours in the snowfall watching for elk. I was camped with four other men — my father, brother, uncle and cousin. We were on a seven-day hunt in an area called Unit 80 near South Fork. We camped just below 9,000 feet and my predawn hump had taken me well up toward tree line. I watched for movement along the remains of a long-forgotten logging road and whispered a dozen prayers of thanks that my brother was still alive. Twenty-four hours earlier, that had been in doubt.

Unit 80 is a jagged swath of public land between South Fork and Wolf Creek in the Southwest corner of Colorado. Two tributaries of the Rio Grande descend steeply through its pines below sweeping meadows of alpine tundra.

My brother's name is Andy. On the evening before our first day of hunting, Andy had scurried to the point of a little rock outcropping not far from camp with a pair of binoculars. From there, he could see the length of a deep valley stretching at least five miles toward the south. Several parks on the far side of the valley looked like good places to take a stand and glass big chunks of land. That night around the campfire, Andy claimed his hunting grounds. Come morning, he was headed across the valley.

My father's name is Bary. That same morning, he and I left camp in the opposite direction via truck, toward a cirque at the top of the same valley. We had plenty of room. Our 10-mile radios couldn't always  span the distances we created; messages had to be relayed through Uncle Lynn who had stayed behind as camp cook. We stayed out all day. When it was too dark to shoot, we started walking back toward the road, and we started to hear radio chatter.

"Andy dislocated his shoulder," Lynn was saying. "He's stuck on a cliff."

7:45 pm
I catch up with Dad less than a mile from the pickup. He's standing at the apex of a bend in an abandoned logging road, holding up his handheld radio, trying to hear Uncle Lynn clearly.

"He did what to a cliff?" Dad is shouting. "You say he fell off a cliff?"

We get the message that Andy is safe for now, then we hustle back to camp for the rest of the story. Here's what happened:

Andy's descent to the valley floor that morning had been treacherous. He had to scoot down much of the slope on his butt, and that was with a good view for wayfinding. When he returned in the evening, it was nearing dark and he had trouble finding the same route. He knew he had descended somewhere in a narrow gorge cutting into the west side of the valley, but the farther he walked into the gorge, the steeper and more narrow its walls got…and the deeper became the shadows. He spotted a place where he thought he could scramble to the rim of the gorge. It was a climb of about 100 feet and it would be a challenge carrying a day pack and a rifle. He made good progress but then, 30 feet from the top, his right foot slipped. Because of his stance at that moment, most of his weight fell against his left handhold in a violent jerk. Andy has a bad left shoulder, an injury from high school basketball, and the jerk was enough to separate the ball from its socket. Frozen by pain and an awkward stance, Andy radiod camp and asked Lynn to send help. Then he waited, legs locked against narrow footholds and his good arm
— clinging  to a ledge above his head — quickly falling asleep.

Over his shoulder, Andy sees the valley below giving way to shadow. The sun is well below the horizon now. Twilight is fading. And Andy realizes he can't ascend the last 30 feet of gorge with his shoulder out of socket. He will have to set it himself, but he can't maneuver to a position to do that.


8:00 pm
The fifth member of our party is Whit, Lynn's son. Whit is 22 years old, six-foot-two, lanky and athletic. He is just arriving in camp when Andy's first radio calls for help come through. Whit had seen the gorge where Andy said he was going to descend that morning. He drops all his gear in the tent and races into the forest to help. It takes him only a few minutes to find the canyon rim above Andy. What he does next is remarkable. (Later, when the search and rescue team is unpacking ropes and harnesses to descended the same cliff Whit had, they are more than a little skeptical of his story.) Whit manages to clamor to a ledge just above Andy. From there, he lowers a length of "mule tape" which is, providentially, the only provision he happened to bring with him, to Andy whose clenched calves and forearms are shaking and weak with fatigue. Andy isn't sure he can hang on to the mountain much longer. Whit pulls him to the ledge and then hustles back up to the rim, but this time when he lowers the mule tape, Andy isn't biting. He tells Whit he doesn't think he can climb the remaining section. So Whit sits down to mark their position and wait for more help. Andy finally unshoulders his gear and goes about setting the socket. There is only the faintest blue light in the western sky.


8:45 pm
Dad and I arrive at camp with a lot of questions. Lynn has already called search and rescue. There is much debate about sending one of us (probably me) through the dark to find the other two men. Whit left without a coat and now that the temperature is dropping, he's getting cold. Luckily, he also has a radio. We eventually decide to wait for search and rescue, but since we can't risk losing their position, we tell Whit to stay where he is and tough out the cold.


9:00 pm
Andy settles in, sets his shoulder, and makes himself at home on the ledge. It's about the size of a sheet of plywood; if he sits with his back against the mountain, his feet dangle over the edge, but he can lay prone if he turns sideways. We radio Andy that a search and rescue team is on the way and Andy decides that's enough reason to give up on climbing. He won't test his shoulder again; he'll wait for the cavalry.


9:45 pm
A Rio Grande County sheriff's deputy arrives at our camp. His name is Russ. He seems only mildly perturbed at being called out late on a Saturday night. He cheers up considerably when offered a cup of coffee and some of Lynn's venison chili.


10:15 pm
Rio Grande County Search and Rescue is a volunteer organization and our campsite is remote. It takes almost two hours for the first of the team to arrive. Slowly, several others trickle in. One of the first to arrive is Bill, the group's leader. Bill steps over to a folding table under a tarp and lamp where we've spread out a map. Andy has given us his longitude and latitude which his GPS can pinpoint to within 15 meters. He has also given us a verbal description of his location. He has the same map we're using which is also helpful. Bill is impressed. Andy might have been foolhardy to attempt that climb, but at least he was prepared and he's managed to keep his wits. He's cracking jokes about helicopters and insurance over the radio which, it's obvious, is new to Bill's search and rescue experience.


10:45 pm
As his crew arrives and the rescue nears, Bill assumes command of the situation. There's another abandoned logging road that circles nearer Andy's position than our camp. Bill decides that's a better place to start the hike toward the gorge. The team members all get back in their vehicles and head to a rally point on the road. There are more than a dozen of them now. Bill turns to me and says, "I need you to come with us. I want you to be our radio contact with Andy. He's comfortable talking to you. We'll relay all of our instructions through you."

We leave Dad and Lynn at camp. I ride with Deputy Russ whose classic rock Sirius station provides a bizarre soundtrack for the whole bumpy drive.

The team stops at a wide spot in the road while Russ and I drive farther east. If we're right about Andy's location, we should be able to drive to within a quarter mile of him. We're hoping Whit will be able to spot the light bar or hear the sirens from Russ's truck. Russ and I drive until the road gives way completely to forest. No luck. Whit never sees us. He can hear the sirens but can't tell which direction or how far they're coming from.

This is bad news.


11:00 pm
The senior members of the rescue team gather around a map laid out on the hood of a Tacoma pickup. They are debating whether we have Andy's location correct. It's colder now; the other members of the team build a small fire and stand around it rubbing their hands. Somewhere to our east, Whit builds a fire too. He's wearing only insulated pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt. But the wind is fierce across the rim of the canyon and Whit worries about losing control of his little fire. He puts it out and shivers.

11:15 pm
Our plan was to have Whit walk out to the road, then turn around and lead us right back to Andy. But now the plan isn't so simple. We ask Andy to fire a shot while we all watch and listen. The report seems to come from the direction we expected but it sounds much farther away than we thought. There is confusion among the team about where Whit and Andy are.


11:30 pm
Bill asks me to tell Whit to walk uphill to the north until he hits the logging road.


11:45 pm
Whit has walked for 15 minutes and seen neither us nor the road.


Midnight
Whit still hasn't found the road. He has no provisions save the radio — no water, no flashlight, inadequate clothing. It begins to dawn on the team that we now have two rescues to execute.


12:30 am
Whit appears. He gave up on finding the road and started heading west toward us, fighting blindly through thick brush and steep terrain. When he appears in someone's headlamp beam, he gets hugs and handshakes all around, from people he has never seen before. Whit probably saved Andy's life when he pulled him to the ledge. And he certainly saved himself; before he appeared, the rescue team was at a loss as to how to find him.


12:45 am
Andy is relieved to hear that Whit is safe, but there is bad news to follow the good. Bill leaves his huddle around the Tacoma and walks out into the dark where I'm chatting with Andy on the radio, trying to keep his spirits up.

"I've made a decision not to go after Andy tonight," Bill tells me. "I need you to tell him that we're delaying the rescue until daybreak. It's too risky for me to send my team out there in the dark if we don't know where we're going."

I can hear something in Andy's voice when I give him the news. Maybe it's fear. Maybe frustration. Maybe it's some of the self-recrimination that kept popping up and I would have to beat it back and tell him he made an honest mistake and we needed him to keep his head and not descend into despair or panic. His voice cracked and he asked about another scenario, but he knew Bill was right. Within seconds, he recovered and said he could tough it out. But when I suggest that we turn off the radios to save battery and just check in every hour on the hour, he responds with, "How about every half-hour?"


1:30 am
When an emergency call goes out, all the available volunteers are expected to respond. Tonight there are more volunteers available than usual. By the time Bill calls it, there are 17 of them stomping their feet around the little fire on the logging road. Bill selects four of them to perform the rescue and tells them to be at our camp at 6:00am. The rest he dismisses. Two of the select crew — a boyfriend and girlfriend who had driven all the way from Del Norte — head home to get a very short night's sleep. Bill and the other two accept our invitation to crash at camp. One of them takes my bunk, another takes Andy's, and a third sleeps in his truck. I lay a sleeping bag next to the campfire but only spend about 30 minutes in it that night, none of them asleep.


2 am
Andy has plenty of water and a little food. He has firestarter, but no fuel on the rocky ledge. He has the radio and GPS both with plenty of battery. Most importantly, since he has been out since early morning, he has warm clothing. All-in-all, he is well-outfitted to spend a night outside, which is good because the forecast is chilly. October at 9,000 feet is never balmy. I tell him the low will be in the teens, but no precipitation is expected.


2:30 am
Andy checks in. He has an update on his gear and the temperature. It's windy on the ledge.


3 am
Andy checks in. Doesn't say much.


3:30 am
I can't raise him on the radio. When he checks in he says he dozed off for a few minutes.


4 am
One or two words about the cold.


4:30 am 
...


5 am
Coldest part of the night. I remind Andy that we're an hour away from assembling the team.


5:30 am
Two of the guys wake up. Andy sounds more lucid.


5:45 am
The couple from Del Norte arrives early, which is remarkable since they couldn't have slept for more than two hours.


6 am
There's a faint light in the sky. Lynn is up making breakfast but no one is interested yet. Bill takes another look at the map and decides not to drive down to the logging road. We'll walk from camp following the route Whit took when he ran toward Andy the evening before.


6:30 am 
Seven of us set out — five rescuers, Whit and I. It's a relatively easy hike and we take it fast. Eager.

7 am
The sun has broken wide and warm over the mountains across the valley by the time we get to Andy. It takes the rescue team less than 15 minutes to rope up, rappel to the ledge, put a harness on Andy, and help him to the top. There are deep sighs and a few tears. We send the news back to camp via radio and Lynn invites the whole crew back for biscuits and gravy.


8 am
The couple from Del Norte are both uber-fit marathoners from Wisconsin. They have never had biscuits and gravy. Lynn shames them for this and piles their plate with enough calories to take them to Kona and back.

Andy is effusive. The team soaks up the gratitude as quickly as the biscuits soak up the gravy. Then we pose for a group photo, shake hands all around, and say good-bye.

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No one got a shot at an elk that trip. Andy didn't hunt very heartily after that. On the afternoon of the day Andy was rescued, it started to snow, and by the time we broke camp, Unit 80 was buried under three feet of it. We sloshed off the mountain with broken gear, wet clothes and wasted elk tags, but grateful that the weather held, that Andy kept his wits, that Whit turned adrenaline-powered-mountain-goat for a few minutes, that God seemed to be watching over us, and that Rio Grande County Volunteer Search and Rescue comes through in a pinch.

Agency

In this story we are telling, we have agency. God calls us to be his intimate allies, his ambassadors in the world. But allies and ambassadors aren't just lackeys; they think for themselves. The common Christian self-image of a sheep, a servant or "clay in the hands of the potter" is incomplete.

Sometimes our churches work so hard to encourage obedience to law of God that they leave little room for intimacy with the Spirit of God. This week, I was reading Thomas Merton's treatise on spiritual direction for religious and came across this sentence:

We should not flee from responsibility, and we should not make such a fetish out of spiritual direction that, even though we are mature and responsible clerics, we refuse to move an inch without being "put under obedience" — in other words without someone else assuming responsibility for us. 

We have agency. It is not usurping God to use it; it is glorifying him. Like a son, it disappoints God when we don't rise to opportunities to reflect him well without being told.

For a nice, clean-cut church kid, this can be a hard lesson to learn. If you make a habit of obedience, you can also make a habit of acquiescence. You can live half your life without making a hard decision — college, major, job, home, even spouse can all be chosen from "approved lists", from a pattern of living up to expectations. How many coming-of-age stories have we heard about this? How many more must we hear to realize the importance of claiming agency?

The story worth writing — the Christian who is serious about his commission — takes initiative. He leaves Ur, risks death in the face of the giant, sails to Cyprus, dances before the ark. He takes actions that are his own idea and reflect his unique identity and calling.

It is not the mark of a mature Christian that he must always be told what to do.

Tour de Life

For most of this month, I was among the few Americans who paid attention to the Tour de France. On Sunday, I watched the 100th tour speed to its colorful finish under the iconic Arc de Triomphe, the sprinters hammering their pedals with superhuman strength and balance to win the final stage while the overall winner coasted smoothly across the finish line with his hands on the shoulders of his teammates, the yellow jersey spread proudly across his narrow chest.

The Tour de France is never won on the final stage. There are no buzzer-beaters on the Champs-Elysees. This year, at Briton named Chris Froome won. He did it with a victory on Stage 8 on a relatively obscure day to a seldom-visited mountain called Ax-3 Domaines. He did not win the Tour on the final day or on the iconic, pressure-ridden climbs of famous mountains like Alpe d'Huez or Mont Ventoux. When he peddled his heart out in Stage 8, he didn't know he was winning the Tour de France; he just knew he was doing his best.

I like that because I think that's how life is. We don't count it a beautiful or successful life if someone hangs around and goes through the motions for eighty years and then literally throws up a Hail Mary just before they run out of time. Life is won or lost in the middle, in the day-to-day, on the weekdays, under the weight and pulse of breathing and working and loving and eating and cuddling for a few minutes before you tuck the kids in.

This year, like almost every other year, the final stage of the Tour de France was more of a parade than a race — a victory lap with lots of smiles and photos and handshakes and champagne and pats on the back. That's how I want to finish. I don't want my last years to be a race to make up for lost time. I want to put in the hard work now, to win in the millions of little peddle strokes that happen in the mundane and obscure, so I can finish my ride with peace and celebration.

I'm a cycling fan. Thanks to Lance and the rest of the dope-heads in the pro peloton, I sometimes feel like I'm the last one on the planet, but I still love the sport. And I think it still has something to teach us about teamwork, fair play, and life.

Exclusive Love

I've been thinking about loving well lately. There are some people in my life who are hard to love. This morning, it occurred to me that love is exclusionary by definition, if not of people then at least of circumstances. To love is to place value in and have affection for. I do that to Christine to the exclusion of others. I love my kids equally, but I exclude other kids from the level of love I give to my own. Even if Jesus loves "all the little children of the world" he excludes something. He doesn't love poverty or injustice. In fact, the Bible says God hates those things. So there's an interesting logical loop —

God is love …
God hates injustice …
Love hates.

As with every other virtue, love is meaningless without its antithesis. You can't have love without hate. Christine hates cancer because she loves me; she hates cancer because it threatens her beloved.

This would be easy to live out if we could always separate the people God loves from the things that threaten their wellbeing, but of course we can't. We are a messy, idolatrous species; we marry our identities to things that destroy us. So to follow Jesus' example of loving others, do you love their addictions? Their character flaws? Their generational curses that they have come to see as as much a part of their identity as their own name? Do you hate the drunk as well as his bottle? Or do you love them both? And even if you can separate them, will he be able to?

Of course, there's another danger here which is summed up in that terrific line from Anne Lamott: "You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”

What if I got really good at loving people? What if we all did? What would that do to our relationships? (Would deep love actually end some relationships?) What would it do to our churches? To our world?

Be Loved

In my last post, I said that the purpose of the Bible is not to stymie us with rules but to woo us with love. I think that's an easy distinction to forget. As Mark Matlock's message reminded me so powerfully yesterday, the purpose of any rule of life is to help us hit the target, not just to keep us from veering off course.

My reading plan had me in Revelation this week. There's an interesting sentence in Jesus' letter to the church at Philadelphia. At the end of all things, when Jesus comes to set all things right, he intends to include an awareness campaign about his love. Verse nine says:

"I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who cain to be Jews though they are not, but are liars — I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you."

At the end, the enemies of the church won't come and acknowledge that we were right, that our politics made sense, that we were smart or righteous or had the right answers. The thing about us that they will recognize — the thing that will identify us — is that Jesus loves us. That is your identity.

Think about that.
Let it sink in.

Your deepest, truest identity is that you are God's beloved. Whatever cinders you are raking, whatever kitchen you are slaving in, whatever clock you are punching, whatever heartache you are facing, whatever failure haunts your past, whatever worry darkens your future, those things do not define you. Your deepest and truest identity is that you are a child of the King and you are loved.

That's what the Bible is about. That's what I want to be about.

Polyester Piety

Stop the presses! Call the pope! The atheists discovered the "polyester clause"!

Twice in the last few days I've watched internet videos from people seeking to discredit Christianity by pointing at polyester-wearing believers and crying "hypocrisy!" Let me see if I can put this to bed.

The issue here is with the Old Testament verse of Leviticus 19:19 which says, "Do not wear clothing woven of two kinds of material." The YouTubers I watched read that verse and surmised that any Christian who wore clothing made of mixed materials was a raging hypocrite and therefore disqualified to speak on any other religious topic.

We'll get to some basic Bible interpretation in a minute, but let's start with the most obvious problems with these tirades. Does anyone really think that Christians would hesitate to rid their closets of polyester if they believed the Bible forbade it? Really? So Christians are willing to forgo sex, drink, gambling, and rated R movies. They're willing to be shunned and made fun of. Some in other countries are even willing to be beaten or martyred, but DON'T ask them to part with those polyester pants! Trust me, if an honest reading of the Bible even remotely hinted that wearing polyester was sinful, there would be churches and rallies and prayer vigils and all manner of crusading against such fabric evils.

Clearly, there is more going on here. That brings me to my second point. It's insulting to presume that someone's first reading of this verse could unearth a centuries long scandal in the church. Assuming Christians aren't just flippantly disregarding the word of God (Christians aren't good at a lot of things, but we're world-class at taking God seriously.) Then such a view assumes one of two things.

1. Christians have known about the polyester clause for lo these many centuries and have covered it up via Da Vinci Code conspiracies in a rebellious, Templar-supervised, campaign to keep hold of our wide-collar polyester shirts. 
2. Christians don't read their Bibles and don't know how ridiculous some of its content is. Again, hardly believable. What do you think we do in those churches every week? Trust me: Christians read their Bibles. We've been doing it for a looooong time. Some of the greatest minds in the history of the world (I am not exaggerating here) have spent their lives in pursuit of studying the Christian scriptures. Literally millions of scholars have poured over Leviticus down through the ages. We are not surprised by polyester. 

So what's up with Leviticus 19:19? If you're interested enough to have read this far, you must really want to know, so here goes. In the Old Testament, God gave the nation of Israel a LOT of laws. Really, it's staggering. There were laws about what to eat, what to wear, when to work and rest, what to sacrifice, when to sacrifice it, how to sacrifice it, what to call the sacrifice, yadda, yadda. In many cases, the Bible is clear about the reasons for the laws. Some laws are given for health reasons and the Bible says as much. (Ancient Israelites may not have known about E. coli, but God did and he protected them from it in the cradle of civilization; much like parents protect their kids.) Some laws were given for ceremonial purposes, so that Israelites would always be reminded of the greatness or holiness or mercy of God. And some laws were given on moral basis: don't kill. Killing is bad. (As an aside, the laws given on moral basis reflect some character of God. Killing is bad - life if good - God is life. Lying is bad - truth-telling is good - God is truth. Hate is bad - love is good - God is love.)

Many Christians and Jews alike believe that many of the health-related laws were meant for a certain time in Israel's history either as protection during a time of primitive health care and food storage, or as a testimony to surrounding nations about Israel's special status.

Christians also believe that ceremonial laws no longer apply because of the sacrificial death of Jesus. We don't kill lambs at church to atone for our sins because Jesus, the Lamb of God, serves as the once-and-for-all sacrifice.

But both Christians and Jews agree that moral laws still apply because they appeal to unchanging moral realities.

Now, here comes the tricky part: which laws are purely ceremonial and which are seriously moral? The Bible isn't always clear. Some cases (like murder and polyester) are easy. Others are murky. That's why intelligent minds have argued these issues for centuries and will continue to do so.

And that's the most important lesson in all this: the Bible isn't a rule book or a series of math formulas. It's a story: an epic, cosmic, fantastic tale of beauty and loss and deception and pain and redemption and joy. It's not meant to be easy to obey or even understand. If God wanted to give us a rule book and make us sit down, eat our broccoli and behave, he could have. Instead, he wants to woo us. He wants us to see him for all his grandeur and goodness. He wants us to fall in love.

And you don't do that by niggling over polyester.

The Price of Luxury

There's a car commercial that's been driving me nuts lately. Here's the script:

You wake up in your luxury bed and slide out of your luxury sheets. You get into your luxury shower and dry off with your luxury towel. You put on your luxury suit and your luxury watch. You grab your luxury coffee from your luxury coffee maker and add some luxury sugar. You step out of your luxury house and step into your luxury car…which makes everything else seem ordinary. Introducing the Acura RLX...

It's amazing to me that any ad agency was able to talk a client into producing this spot, and than any client was shallow enough to do so. I'm sure all the market research pointed to the fact that their target market loves luxury, but at what point do you say, "You know what? We're not going to give them what they want. We're going to appeal to the better angels of their nature. We're going to be that kind of car company."?

Maybe this commercial sticks out to me because of its similarity to an example I heard Donald Miller use recently. He suggested that we imagine our lives like a movie. We get to decide what kind of movie we want to make. Now imagine that our greatest ambition is to buy a nice car, retire early, and go snorkeling. Imagine watching a movie where that's the climax. The hero drives off the lot in his new Acura and the credits roll. Does that story move you? Does that story matter? Is anyone in the audience touched by that story?

No.

But we let ourselves believe that a little more luxury will bring us a better story. Instead, it just brings us a comfortable chair in which to live out terrible stories.

I know wealth is relative. I realize that I am more wealthy than 90 percent of the people on the planet. I'm writing this post on a $2,000 computer, for heaven's sake! So I see the potential for hypocrisy in decrying someone else's love of luxury. But I can't help but at least mention it, because I think our luxury is robbing us blind.

Our family supports a little girl named Sabrina in Tanzania through Compassion International. Here's what I keep hearing when I watch that Acura spot:

Sabrina wakes up in her dirty bed on the dirty floor of her dirty hut. She walks dirty streets to her dirty school. After school, she plays with her dirty doll. Then she washes down dinner with dirty water and flashes a smile at her grandmother framed by dirty cheeks.

The question is: which story is better? The Acura story or Sabrina's? And the surprising answer is: neither. Both are rife with poverty. Both are ruining lives. As World Vision President Wess Stafford likes to say, "The opposite of poverty isn't wealth. The opposite of poverty is 'enough'."