Fort Bragg
The group in the woods was made up of five recruits that had joined each other in order to reduce their chances of getting lost.
They were all panting, dog-tired and covered in mud.
A steep descent started beneath them, too steep for the heavy rucksacks they were carrying. Had they continued their march going down there, they would probably have killed themselves.
Only one of the group had already made a few steps of this steep and wet descent but Robert Plaster - who was behind and above him – stopped him right there, saying:
“Where the fuck are we going?”
Plaster received no reply.
He was filthy with mud on his legs, arms and rucksack too, because of the many times he had fallen on the ground.
The man a few steps below him – and exactly as dirty as him – was called Joseph Danforth.
He was quite thin and had a long beard and hair.
Small drops of rain were falling from his beard as he stood there, gasping for breath and waiting for what else Plaster had to say.
“Let's go back” Plaster insisted.
Having already taken some steps down the descent, Danforth turned to the other members of the small group.
Then he made a fast calculation in his mind.
Going back to take a different route would mean going back up the hill they had just come down three clicks (kilometers) ago.
Going up to that hill again?
No way.
Then he looked at the few feet of slope that he needed to go up to just return to the rest of the group, and that look was enough to make him feel sick.
Marching more than needed, none of them would ever accomplish the task. They would all collapse much sooner than that.
Not to mention the time limit.
Going back also meant they would have never reach the extraction point in time.
They would all be disqualified and rejected from the selection program and he absolutely couldn't afford that.
That selection was his last hope to stay in the army.
A few feet above him, Plaster stopped his thoughts.
“Let's go back – he reaffirmed again – this path is only good for suicide. I don't want to get my fingers burnt”
Danforth was the only one really sure about going down that slope.
He too - just like Plaster - had studied many times the contour lines on the map, worried about how steep the terrain might really be.
But he too, just like Plaster, had decided that the slope was worth a try.
That damn canyon on the map could have been both a viable path to succeed in the task or a death trap where you broke your back, depending on pure luck. The only way to be sure about the viability of this damn canyon, was to give it a try by seeing it with your own eyes.
It was a classic case of fifty fifty... Which is why – at the end – those recruits found themselves at the top of this dangerous descent.
What Danforth was sure about (but Plaster wasn't) was that trying to go back would mean failure.
To Danforth that looked obvious, but to Plaster it didn't.
Danforth thought that Plaster's opinion was a matter of fear, the fear of ending up falling from a gorge which – tired as they all were – surely wasn't impossible.
But the real problem was what fear did to people's minds.
Danforth had seen that happening a lot of times in Vietnam.
When an option is dangerous, people see it as prone to fail, impossible or technically wrong, even when it's none of that at all and the truth is that it is a good option, but only dangerous for your safety.
They were late – all the recruits in the group agreed about that -, but whatever Plaster said there was no way to go back and accomplish the task in time too.
Only fear could make anyone believe something like that.
No.
In Danforth's mind, they only had two options: getting rejected from the selection or putting their spinal cords at risk, and without any certainty of passing the task anyway.
Of course, the danger was a little exaggerated even for a special forces selection process.
A Process which, by the way, wasn't going so well for him.
In his physical condition, it was difficult to believe that he would survive another week of that stuff.
Many other recruits were obviously doing better than him, and Trautman would chose some of them for his new teams, not him.
He was going to be rejected.
He could feel it happening soon inside his guts, maybe already tomorrow.
Or maybe – again - fatigue and fear were clouding his mind, just as they were doing with Plaster. It was something he knew very well.
He had lived it one hundred times at least, when he was in Vietnam.
He couldn't be clear at the moment, because the fatigue had become pain a long time ago.
Danforth looked at the slope again: after a narrow curve below, the grass disappeared under him.
He rubbed his face and eyes, to take away some of the rain on it.
His beard was pouring water.
He knew all of those feelings: fatigue, coldness, fear.
He wasn't clear.
He shouldn't listen himself, neither his mind nor body.
He should go on and nothing else, like a machine.
“I'm going on” he finally said.
A short silence followed.
Then Plaster - who was the oldest of the five recruits group - said:
“My friend....This way you really risk seriously injuring yourself”
“I know”
This time silence was longer, with everyone quiet and still.
Then one of the four broke away from the group and with uncertain steps started going toward Danforth.
He walked slowly along the steep slope, and carefully, planting his feet well to avoid slipping.
“I'm coming with you” he said.
Then the rest of the group slowly started turning to go away.
They looked like elephants on the move. The tiredness was such that they unintentionally knocked each other with their rucksacks, so stunned were they by their weight.
“Well... Good luck, man” Plaster said.
Danforth saw the group vanishing above him.
Then he and his mate found themselves alone.
Danforth looked at him and read his name on his uniform: Krakauer.
Realizing that Danforth was reading it, his panting mate said:
“People call me Crack”
“I am Danforth”
“They'll never do it. I had a suspicion that Plaster didn't understood shit about land navigation, but you know how these things go... You see a large group of recruits and because they are so many,, you think that they can't be wrong”
“I was thinking that too”
“Come on, now”
The grass slope went down following a water rivulet.
Water erosion had cut the mountain crest creating a little slippery canyon covered with grass.
As the two went on descending, the canyon walls became steeper and the mud patches on the grass larger.
To avoid losing their balance they started supporting themselves using their hands, sinking their fingers in the grass and mud.
A while later their hands were dirty up to their wrists, and when Danforth stopped to check the map, he could barely read it.
What's worse, every time he touched the map he risked making it so dirty that it would soon become useless.
He tried to wipe the dirt with his fingers, but he only made the mess even worse.
In the end, he wiped all of the map with the cuff of his jacket.
Below them, the slope dropped suddenly.
Danforth stopped to look at it.
They were at risk of breaking a leg, or worse.
Krakauer instead hadn't any hesitation at all and continued walking with the same methodical calm walking, as if he was marching in slow motion, planting his feet carefully at every single step.
“Uh, come on man... It's enough.” Danforth said, by then ready to quit.
Krakauer stopped and turned back.
“What?”
“Have you seen where the fuck we are going?”
“I have seen it, yes”
“That must be thirty feet”
Krakauer looked down and nodded.
“Yep”
“I don't want to kill myself”
“And who says we are going to kill ourselves? We can break our spines at most”
“Come on, fuck!”
Krakauer looked down.
“Yes”
The two stayed still for a while. Krakauer was looking down and Danforth backward and upward, as if thinking about going back.
“Man, man...” said Krakauer.
Then he added:
“You don't think enough”
“What the fuck are you saying?”
“What do we have inside our rucksacks?”
“I don't know: shit? Bricks, I think”
“Me too”
Krakauer removed his rucksack from his back with a lament and while doing that, Danforth could read the pain on his face because, you know, when you remove a heavy rucksack after having carried it for many hours, it's the worst.
After he taken off his rucksack, Krakauer opened it and gave a fast glance into it.
“Bricks, sure. Bricks of shit”
Then he lowered the rucksack on the ground and in front of him.
He stretched forward to look down the slope, then gave a strong kick to the rucksack, and it immediately vanished.
“Oh shit” Danforth said.
“Have you seen man? Now we can go down this fucking hill without any rucksack at all”
“You are out of your mind”
“Come on.... We are going to fail our task anyway. Let's try it”
Danforth walked down a few steps, until he was beside his mate.
Then he stopped and looked up to the sky.
The rain was never-ending.
Even though the rain had been unceasing for days, the sky instead of emptying itself looked as if it was charging even more, becoming grayer and grayer and darker an darker... And it never stopped.
“Oh, Jesus” Danforth said, while looking at it.
He took off his rucksack and the pain was so strong that he looked like he was growling.
“Be careful - said Krakauer -: don't have to throw it. Just roll it. Because if you don't, it could rip apart, and in that case you'll have to carry your bricks with your bare hands”
Danforth gave a little kick to his rucksack and it started rolling violently. Before vanishing from sight, it was bouncing.
The idea that he was going to descend that slope gave Danforth a sharp pain to his stomach.
“If you want some free advice, go down on your ass, because going down standing is impossible” said Krakauer, then he crouched down and started going down partly dragging himself and partly using his arms..
A while later he vanished from sight, but Danforth could still hear him cursing.
Danforth waited for a while, just to be sure not to overrun his mate had he started rolling down, then he moved too.
He didn't want to use his butt, but three steps was enough to make him change his mind.
So he sat down on the ground and started pulling himself using the plants.
After a while, he started slipping.
He tried to direct himself against the left wall of the little canyon, but he couldn't.
Suddenly his butt had became a sledge.
It was just like going on a sledge with the difference that he had nothing under his butt and he could painfully feel all of the roughness of the earth under him.
He was scared already but in the beginning – at least – the fall seemed to be under control.
But then, Danforth started to speed up too much.
While falling, he let himself painfully bounce from one wall to the other.
He was trying to get near the mud walls hoping to grasp something to stop himself (or slow down at least) during his fall.
But he never could, and so he knocked his ankles, elbows and ribs.
He received a rock on his testicles and the sharp pain was so strong that it stopped his breath for a while.
When Danforth finally managed to stop himself against one of the walls of the little canyon, he couldn't breathe because of pain.
He stayed there still, writhing with pain and breathless.
Then, at last, finally came the scream liberating him from pain.
“AAAAAAH”
He reopened his eyes.
The next slope waiting for him was even worse.
Danforth shouted another long series of curses.
Then he suddenly realized how many blows he had just received, how many different pains he was feeling all over his body.
The most worrying one was right at the center of his back, which was very bad, because the back is always a serious matter.
He stayed a while just like that, clung to one of the walls of that damn canyon made of mud.
He couldn't see his rucksack and his mate either and – most of all - he couldn't see the end of this damn fall, that on the contrary seemed to just get even worse, and he was already too injured to simply go on.
He launched another long series of curses, then he decided to try to climb the wall, in order to exit from that damn canyon. He only wanted to get out from that damn deadly trap, and the selection process could go to hell.
So he tried, he really tried... But he simply couldn't.
As he slipped down instead of going up, he desperately sank his fingers into the mud and while doing so, one of his fingers violently met a rock under the mud, and his nail bent back on itself.
Danforth yelled because of pain, while he realized that he was slipping down more and more.
“NO! NO! NOOOO!”
He could do nothing more than turn around to place his legs forward, with the purpose of protecting his body.
A while later, he was accelerating downward.
A few seconds later, he was almost flying.