January 08, 2007

• Good links, smt. Mixed feelings on the demise, though. Flirt with death, and sometimes it comes courting.
• A tremendous story, but I almost wish I hadn't read it.
• I agree. I found it emotionally wrenching, and afterward I was angry at these divers for so foolishly putting their lives on the line for no real benefit other than to their own egos. If I, a complete stranger, felt this way, how must it have been for their loved ones?
• I am reminded just a bit of the death of alpinist Mark Bebie in 1993 on Slipstream in the Canadian Rockies. He and his two companions perished in either an avalanche or a falling cornice, climbing during an avalanche season when wiser heads would stay off the mountain and away from the unstable snow fields. (Append the maxim here about the dearth of old, bold climbers. It's strange... I would have put my money on his surviving, because he was one of the thoughtful ones, by no means a wild man. What he was doing on that route in that season, I cannot fathom.) As fond as I was of Mark -- he was a kind and generous man, and the first homebrewer I had ever met, which seemed to me a truly magical thing in the mid-eighties -- and as sorry as I can be that he's not still around, I couldn't get too upset at his death. The danger comes with the alpinist habit: it was intrinsically part of who he was, and if you knew him, you had to accept that. At his death, he was a only a little younger than I am now, but he lived so much more vigorously than I have, even as I bid to double his short lifespan. Me sitting here, typing on this keyboard in a cold office, reminiscing on the dangerous avocations of others. Not to hijack your thread, smt, but Nickdanger's semi-outrage provoked the memory. That video of Dave's last dive is a horrifying relic. Right now, I don't have the stones to watch it.
• Agreed with Nick's sentiment. And I'm fairly certain Dave was comfortable in his method of "flirting" with death. At least he was not selfish in this respect; "The most important person on this dive is you. If you have a problem, deal with your problem and forget about me." [Dave speaking to the other divers before proceeding with the "big dive."] That video of Dave's last dive is a horrifying relic. Right now, I don't have the stones to watch it. Also agreed. I haven't watched the video in-full. I can watch about halfway through, and then, that's about all I'm ready to deal with (especially considering the descriptions of his anxious gasps in the linked story). I put the link there for those who want to go. One facet that is emotionally trying about this story, is the sheer fact that the other divers had to face the grim reality for hours while going through the ascent/decompression phase... What a horrible feeling to contemplate, just sheer utter helplessness. I admire individuals who place themselves in such positions, not because of the inherent danger involved, but because of they way in which they choose live their lives. What a better way to go, than in an act of something that is true to one's self?
• Again, as goetter, I apologize if I am hijacking the thread, but I'm kinda on the fence about folks who do this sort of thing. I admire them, but at the same time, their risk taking is not only dangerous to themselves, but expensive for the rest of us. In this specific case I think my argument fails because the divers had provided their own backups, but in similar cases like the mountain climbers who recently perished in the Oregon mountains an argument can be made for financial responsibility. In climbing the mountain in the middle of winter they not only put themselves at risk, but when needed to be rescued it was up to others to come to their aid and also be put in danger. It seems to me to be not only horribly selfish but damn expensive. I propose that people who take these sorts of deadly risks in national parks not only be required have a permit, but be required to buy a rescue insurance policy so the burden isn't on the rest of us when they mess up. In my state we are required to be insured when we drive a car for much the same reasons. Why not make people financially responsible for even more dangerous behavior like this?
• Shit. I meant "as WITH goetter".
• Wow, brutal. (The comments here I mean.)
• A harrowing tale of brave and admirable guys but I feel too that those who take extreme risks are ultimately responsible for the consequences.
• It's been a season of elective outdoor death, between tragic death of James Kim and the more predictable death of 3 climbers on Mt. Hood. My empathy for the victims of that kind of story is about used up until at least April or May. I started watching the video, but had to bail out. It's too sad and spooky.
• I watched the whole thing. It kind of prompted my pathos.
• > It kind of prompted my pathos. I watched it too. I watched a man die today. And I don't know what to think of it, except that I'm furious about all the dismissive reactions here -- not because I think they're wrong, really, but because they don't help me understand this. They don't fill the void. And so I don't know what to think. I imagine that there's this scale along which you can plot the dangerous things people do. On the one end, you've got firefighters and EMTs, who drive VERY fast and go into very dangerous places FAST with great training but no plan -- because everything's a precarious case by case, and seconds always count. Their mission is to save a life, and every moment of delay diminishes the chances of success. On the other end of the scale, you have the people from the Jackass movie throwing themselves at things and off things, and cackling gleefully as they nearly crack their skull open. Somewhere near the middle (but closer to the firefighter side) is David Shaw. He's not going down to collect some pirate's bounty of sunken treasure, but to retrieve the remains of a fellow human being and a fellow diver. There's no doubt that humans tend toward a special treatment of the deceased, care for the remains, and a certain level of honor. Both of us should put our pathos aside, for a moent, if it's not helping. We can always come back to it. We're made of pathos -- it exudes through every orifice and pore. Instead, we should be careful when we evaluate every one who takes a risk, necessary or not, and come to our own conclusions. As a culture, we revere people who do things that seem difficult or impossible to us, that explore new places and expand what we think and feel. So what about astronauts? How about taxi drivers? How about the person killed in the burning wrecks that stack up along the 2 lane road leading into the city that's a dangerous traffic jam for two hours every morning and night? (I often wonder as I'm driving past, if if was someone's mother or father, and I can only hope they will arrive home safely -- but there's that pathos, sneaking back again. It always comes back to that, doesn't it?) I can tell you from watching that video all the way to the end, that he took the ultimate responsibility for his own actions. I could see that and hear it and feel it. I just don't know how to make sense of it. They leave us with the words of his wife Ann: "I couldn't keep him tied down. He was like a bird. You put a bird in a cage or you let it fly free. If you put him in a cage, he is never really happy. Having him fly free was always a risk. There was always the chance he wouldn't come back one day. It is something I have always known I might one day have to face." I've come to only one conclusion: Whatever either one of us might think about his death, we should be so lucky as to have a life like his or a partner like his, even if our life never involves courting death every day. It's how he lived and not how he died that makes the difference. And that's something for everyone to think about, especially those that even suspect that they might be living, in any sense, in a cage.
• who drive VERY fast We have a program called EVAP — Emergency Vehicle Accident Prevention — which can be summarized in one line: "Slow the fuck down, cowboy." This program exists because most emergency-responder casualties take place on the way to the incident scene, not at the incident itself. And god help any innocent parties not guilty of testosterone/adrenaline poisoning who're in our trajectory at the time. (Like an idiot, I have driven on public highways at 120mph to respond. I really really needed EVAP.) /derail I'm not seeing pathos. I'm seeing us readers torn between the man's tragic-heroic end and the grief of the survivors — a conflict brought into sharp focus by the detail of this 21st-century reporting. Which is to say, more points for smt's very good link. Maybe that's your pathos. If so, I say it's inescapable.
• Steely Duran, I'm not sure Monkeyfilter is here to "fill the void". Is that what it's here for? This is most of all a dialog. Admittedly, sometimes I come here for a bit of solace from time to time when someone I respect has died, but primarily I come for an exchange of ideas. I recognize and appreciate that this man, as opposed to many who attempt to do this sort of stuff, took responsibility for his actions, but I don't know if I buy into the idea that these sorts of actions are to be anymore admired than those who suffer a lifetime of soul killing job to feed their family. What is more heroic, those who, like Job like, work and strive for their families and willingly live that "cage", or living for the self, always putting your life on the line? I think both paths are to be admired.
• I think a single man has the right to take risks and test himself in dangerous situationsm and in fact, if done properly it may be admirable. When you marry or strike up a settled relationship, these things have to be negotiated and a partner may or may not accept that the risk-taking is just part of who you are. A man with children, on the other hand, doesn't have sole ownership of his own life any more, and I don't think he really has the right to gamble with it.
• Right, I agree. THey are really different types of risk taking. Although I was initially trying to make a scale of value, I switched to examples which were distinct only because some are very common (risking your life in traffic every day to feed your family) and some are fairly uncommon (being an astronaut). The point I never got to was: I had a harder time getting to the point where I could even question who was picking up the tab. It's a little too rational for me. But yes, it's an idea, and of course it should be thought about and communicated. It was just a little unsettling after hearing a man take his last breaths. On the other hand, how much do we really pay for David Shaw? Moreover, since we encourage dangerous things like exploration and risk-taking overall anyway, isn't it a small price to pay for the common good, so that people really can be free to go to the ends of the earth if that's what they truly desire? When a David Shaw dies, what is a squidranch's bill? A penny even? Could you spare it? If you could shouldn't you? In the end, it's only an interesting Fermi Problem at best -- because there's one kind of bottom line, and there's another really different one. I should have just made some small, cute (but respectful) joke about this, paid my respects, and left it at that. But I couldn't leave it at that; to me, that feels like a cage!
• > Maybe that's your pathos. If so, I say it's inescapable. It is truly absolutely inescapable. And if it took me the rest of my life to come to terms with this, it would be time well spent. Therefore there is no exaggeration when I say: Thanks, smt -- your links (and your comments, too) are some of the best food for thought this lifetime.
• Wow. Oddly, this is one of the better threads I've come across in awhile. Thanks, smt! Like most here I am unable to watch the video. I cannot willingly watch a man die. Amazing the difference a minute and a half can make in a dive.
• I read an article in the Observer about this a while back. It shook me up for days afterwards; just reading about watching the video was bad enough.
• Thanks for your comments SD; I found an affinity with them. I too, am not able to make the leap from the story of Dave Shaw to what the financial cost is to the rest of society (when people take such risks). I can appreciate squid's comments, because he does make a good point to a degree (specifically, on public lands with little or no accountability taken). However, I see this particular event outside of that realm. Firstly, the dive took place on private property in South Africa. It was an attempt to recover a body; police divers were present. Great precautions were taken. Alas, one can never circumvent the unexpected. When one raises the issue of insurance and the financial burden to society, I am on the fence. Does the problem lay with the indivdual/s who take such high-risk actions? Or does the problem lay with the system? This story, in particular, has always stuck with me. It's a reminder to myself, to not take life for granted, to step outside of the boundaries now and then (i.e., to not be "guided" by fear), and to appreciate the primal qualities found in each and every one of us.
• I read this story yesterday and it's still haunting me today (which is to say, thanks very much, SMT). With regard to the societal aspect, my gut reaction is that society ought to be there precisely to facilitate the aspirations of all its members - and so, perhaps, help alleviate the burden of "those who suffer a lifetime of soul killing jobs to feed their family" (which, as squidranch noted, is most definitely a form of heroism).
• I agree whole-heartedly with Plegmund. Well said.
• He didn't approach this task in anything resembling a cavalier fashion. On-site DC chamber, 25 surface personnel, numerous support divers, massive amounts of gas and extensive planning as described here. I didn't see who picked up the tab for this however. It's worth noting that Don Shirley almost bought the farm himself in trying to rescue Dave and temporarily lost his ability to walk. His dive lasted 13 hours before chamber treatments and he was vomiting a good deal of that time due to inner ear rupture. Throwing up underwater is even less fun than on the surface.
• Once again, it wasn't this specific "risk taking" that I was referring to when I mentioned the need for financial responsibility. If anything this diver knew what he was doing and seemed to take every precaution he could when doing so. I respect not only his bravery, but his accountability. This just got me thinking about others who are far more cavalier about what they do like the recently deceased hikers in Oregon and others like them. I recently went to watch a friend's father-in-law race his little Lotus at Buttonwillow race track near Bakersfield. These guys are required to have not just regular insurance coverage, but race insurance coverage, before they can even get on the track. Admittedly, this was a private enterprise, but why not have the same requirements when people do dangerous stuff in our state parks. It just strikes me as awfully unfair to the rest of us. I'm not saying that folks shouldn't go on dangerous hikes in the middle of winter. That's cool. It's your life. Just have the social responsibility of cleaning up your own mess, at least financially.
• Search and Rescue: A Privilege for the Saved or Burden for Society? Paying the Price for Rescue
• And by "the rest of us", I first and foremost mean those brave folks who had to go out in the middle of a winter storm to try to rescue those popsicles, not me specifically. And you're right Steely Duran, it didn't cost me a penny, but it could have cost another man/woman's life.
• Thanks for the links goetter. Fascinating. Cumulative rescue costs are relatively low: In 1999, the total cost per visitor of performing all search and rescue activities was a mere 1.2 cents, a small fraction of the total cost of $6.90 per visitor for all [National Park Service] functions. Though most of the search and rescue money in Alaska is spent on looking for missing planes, lost hikers and hunters, and disabled boats, that's not what stirs the debate. It's the rescues, often highly publicized rescues of climbers on Mount McKinley. - Anchorage Daily News, August 1998 Another factor that must be addressed when considering the requirement of carrying rescue insurance is the impact claims will have on current rescue insurance policies. Former South District Ranger J.D. Swed, quoted in a Boulder Daily Camera news story, highlighted a major problem. When someone pays for a service in advance, they expect to get it. If someone pays for an insurance policy and they get to the 14,000-foot mark and decide they need to come down, who is to say they don't have to be taken down. The [National Parks] Act makes no mention of limiting access due to lack of health insurance, ability to pay, or any other factor. Given that the agencies incurs little to no expense for direct health care of injured visitors, we believe there is no legitimate reason for the government to force anyone to divulge whether they have health insurance coverage. The working poor of this country, such as many raft guides, are the most likely segment of our society to lack health insurance, yet they pay taxes that support our public lands. They already face significant obstacles in paying entrance fees to enjoy their public lands without forcing them to show proof of medical insurance, which most simply cannot afford.