The Fall

In which I fall off a mountain, and live to tell the tale

In the moments after I regain consciousness, I’m a bit baffled.

“This is such a weird, uncomfortable place to take a nap,” I think to myself, as I notice the rocks, dirt, and pine needles beneath me. The night sky looms large overhead—a tapestry of stars and a vibrant moon that illuminates the tops of the Ponderosa Pines. Laying on my back and staring towards the heavens, I feel oddly peaceful. This moment is confusing, sure. But the setting is so beautiful, and my heart so calm.

The serenity evaporates as I make my first attempt to stand up. I quickly realize that something is Very Wrong. My left hip and shoulder scream with pain, and I abort the attempt, slumping back to the ground. The reality of my situation begins to sink in.

It’s the dead of night, in the middle of nowhere in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and I have just plummeted 50+ feet from the top of a tall, jagged granite formation. There’s no one around for miles. I can’t move. I am injured. I am alone.

II

It’s the spring of 2012. Vince and I are film students at the University of Denver, and our professor has just nominated us for an exciting summer internship. We’d be working alongside a network executive attempting to spin up a new TV channel for America’s national parks. Vince and I would spend our summer stationed near Mt. Rushmore, traveling around to all of the neighboring parks, capturing as much raw footage of the natural beauty as we could. That footage would then be edited down into a few pieces of pilot programming that would help the executive bootstrap the new network. For a pair of cinematography nerds, it felt like a dream job.

The rub is that Vince and I don’t particularly enjoy each other’s company. We’d worked together on my thesis film in the preceding months, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. The notion of spending three more months living and working alongside one other is not alluring to either of us. But the gig is too cool to pass up. So a few weeks after the spring semester comes to a close, Vince and I drive up from Denver to Rapid City, South Dakota.

For two months, we live in a remote housing outpost alongside a handful of park rangers, barely a quarter mile from Mt. Rushmore. During the days, we hop in our minivan and head to one of the neighboring parks—Badlands, Wind Cave, Devil’s Tower. Whenever something catches our eye, usually landscapes or wildlife, we whip out our camera and record. In the evenings, we get into our individual routines. Vince sits in the living room of our small apartment, playing video games on his laptop. I get in the habit of taking the minivan and driving up into the hills.

In those days, I was obsessed with time-lapse photography, and was particularly enchanted with capturing the night sky. Watching stars and planets and cosmic movements spring to life filled me with wonder, and I was determined to capture a few beautiful time-lapses during my stay in South Dakota. This wasn’t for the national parks, or the executive. It was for me.

I drive up a narrow winding road, and through a single lane tunnel, to the Norbeck Overlook, a large granite formation that looks out over the vastness of the Black Hills. Rushmore’s famous facade is visible off in the distance. During the day, the small park has a handful of visitors looking out over the scenic vistas. But at night, it’s eerily empty. I’ve been coming here every night for two weeks to shoot time-lapses, and in that time I’ve only seen one other person.

One thing you should know about time-lapses of the night sky is they take forever. On account of the earth’s slow rotation, capturing enough shots to see discernible movement in the stars takes at least a few hours, but ideally more. I’ve been arriving at the overlook around 9pm each night, setting up my camera, then leaving around 2am. There’s a lot of waiting, which I fill by calling friends and family, listening to music, playing games on my phone, going on walks, etc.

On the night of The Incident, I’m not feeling well. I’ve got a bit of a head cold, but I’d decided hours earlier that I didn’t want to stay cooped up in the apartment. So I head to the overlook and set up my camera. Tonight, I’m trying to capture a shot that I’ve been thinking about for weeks. At the top of the granite formation sits a dead tree. Its remnants are gnarled and twisted, and it looks cool as hell. Perhaps it’s been struck by lightning. I set up my shot with the tree’s skeleton in the foreground, with the stars in the background, ever so slightly out of focus to create a dreamy look. I have a sense this time-lapse is going to be my magnum opus of the summer. My head is throbbing, and I’m congested, but I’m way too excited about my time-lapse to notice.

At one point in the evening, as I’m in waiting mode. I venture back up to the top of the formation to check on my camera. I want to make sure it’s still snapping a fresh photo every 45 seconds, and that my camera has enough battery life to fulfill its mission. It does. I stand there for a moment, looking out over the vastness beyond. The moonlight is spectacular tonight, and I can see for miles. The last thing I remember, right as I begin to lose my balance, is thinking to myself, “Oh shit, this is really really bad.” I tumble off the side of the overlook. 

III

After my first failed attempt to stand up, I casually lay around for bit. “I just need a few minutes to gather myself,” I think. “Then I’ll push through the pain, go get my camera, and go home and sleep it off. Easy peasy.” It’s only when I go to check the time that I begin to suspect my plan might not work.

As a teenager, I loved watches, and I’d brought my favorite one with me to South Dakota. It’s sleek, elegant, timeless—a white face adorned by roman numerals, accompanied by a dark leather band. Classy as hell. I raise my left wrist and glance at it, and stare in bewilderment. The moon is bright enough that I should be able to see the time easily. But instead, all I see on my wrist is a dull silvery glow. I go to touch the watch face, and my fingers are met not with glass, but a texture that feels foreign. Then I realize what’s happened.

I’ve fallen so hard—hit the ground so violently—that my poor watch has emptied itself of all its inner workings. All that remains on my wrist is a thin metal shell. So it goes.

“Fuck, I really loved that watch,” I mumble to myself. Frustrated, I try to get up again, this time with more conviction. It doesn’t work, as the pain rockets through my hip and shoulder. A few minutes later, I try one more time. No dice. I realize I’m not going to be able to get up on my own. I need help.

As a 20-year old kid, I don’t yet believe in God, or anything of the sort. But as I pull my phone out of my right pocket, I’m certain it’s going to be destroyed. When I see that it’s still in one piece, I’m hopeful, yet cautious. When I press the power button and it lights up with its harsh LED glow, I’m stunned. When I glance into the upper right corner of the screen, and see that I have plenty of battery and a single bar of service, it crosses my mind that I’m either the luckiest man alive, or that divine intervention might be a real thing. I know I’m going to make it out of here.

I punch 911 into the dial pad, then spend several minutes second guessing myself, hesitating to make the call. “It’ll be such an inconvenience for them to come out here and find me. I don’t want to be a burden. They’re gonna think I’m so stupid for being up here alone.” (I swear to you, this is actually something I thought in the moment.) But eventually, I tell the voice in my head that we have no other choice. I call.

“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator asks. She’s a young woman, and to my ear, she sounds pretty cute. “Ummm hi… I’ve fallen off the Norbeck Overlook, kinda near Mt. Rushmore, I guess. I can’t stand up, but pretty sure I’m okay.” She sounds stunned at first, then gathers herself. She asks me a few more questions to discern where exactly I am. “Help is on the way,” she tells me, “and I’m going to stay on the phone with you until they arrive.” I tell her about the internship, and the cool time-lapse I’ve set up, with the dead tree with the stars in the background.

Twenty minutes later, I hear the sound of a helicopter. Followed soon by voices shouting in the distance. “Robert” they yell, trying to locate the spot where I fell. “Robert, can you hear us,” the voices come closer. I can see the light from a powerful flashlight animating the pines around me. “I’m here!” I croak. I thank the woman on the phone, and begin to wave my arms. “I’m here!”

Before they can lift me onto the stretcher, I ask, “Hey, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, can you guys grab my camera before we leave? This time-lapse is going to be really cool.”

IV

As the helicopter lands at the hospital in Rapid City, a paramedic asks if there’s anyone I might like to call, to let them know I’m okay. I think for a moment, and say “yeah, I should probably call my mom.”

When I told her I was writing about this incident, my mom was adamant that I include her side of the story—how my call startled awake before 5am, how strange and disconcerting my voice sounded—probably from a combination of being severely concussed and hopped up on morphine—how I kept insisting I was okay, even though it was clear something was terribly wrong, how she couldn’t get a straight answer out of me about what happened, what hospital I was at, or even what city, how she was confused, disoriented, scared out of her mind. She doesn’t get any answers from me, and has to get the details by calling my boss later that day. She makes the 10 hour drive up from Denver. The next day, once she’s checked on me in hospital and knows that I am, in fact, going to be okay, she drives up to the Norbeck Overlook herself, to the scene of the crime. She returns that afternoon looking a bit haunted. “Dude, you fell off a three story building.”

I spend the next 11 days in the hospital. The fourth of those days is my 21st birthday. The nurses refuse to bring me a celebratory beer, but they do bring me a slice of cake for breakfast. It’s delicious.

My injuries include, but are not limited to: a fractured hip, a dislocated shoulder, six broken ribs, a severe concussion, a gaping wound on my left hip, and several contusions on the back and side of my head, which require 47 stitches in total. On my left hip—the point of impact—there’s a hematoma growing in size daily. Prior to the fall, I had no clue what a hematoma was, but I come to learn it’s the medical term for a big-ass bruise, where your body sends blood and fluid to a localized point of trauma, and it swells up in an attempt to heal. Eventually, the hematoma is supposed to be reabsorbed back into the body, at least in theory. In my case, my left hip has experienced some Capital T Trauma, and it swells up to the size of a bowling ball. Then a basketball. Then it grows larger still. It does not get reabsorbed. Not after a few weeks, months, or years. But more about that in a bit.

My first few days in the hospital fly by in an undifferentiated, anxious haze. The pain meds work their magic. Mostly. My mom is there a lot. Vince comes to visit, briefly, along with our park ranger friends. The network executive drops by. I watch a Denver Broncos pre-season football game. They lose. I start ruminating. I’m supposed to start at a new film school in a few weeks. I worry I’ll have to drop out. Will I ever be able to make films again? Everything hurts. I press the button for more pain meds. Man, this hospital food isn’t very good. I’m sleepy. Wait a minute… I wonder how my time-lapse turned out?

For the first five days after the fall, I’m bedridden and downtrodden. A nurse tells me I should start attempting to walk again. My body and muscles are atrophying in this bed, she tells me. Even though walking is going to suck, and the pain will be substantial, and there’s no way around it, life will get better the sooner I try. She promises me this is true. I believe her. There’s some kind of metaphor in there, probably.

I spend the next two days focused on trying to stand up. I can’t take any steps yet, but eventually I can put a bit of weight on my left foot. My hip screams out in agony, and I have to sit down to rest. Then I try standing again, this time for a bit longer as my mom and the nurse cheer me on. Slowly I increase the weight on my left foot, and I clench the bed’s guardrail less and less. Progress. The following two days, I start putting one foot in front of another. I slowly make my way out of my room into the hallway. I’m using a walker, and can only take one step every five seconds or so. The elderly and infirm are making laps around me in the hospital hallways. “Just you wait, I’ll catch up with you eventually, old man!” I say to one of my speedy elderly walking buddies. I persist. One step at a time. Slightly faster each day. The nurse was right. Things are getting better.

I’m released from the hospital on August 17th, 2012. The next morning, my mom and I will make the drive back to Denver, and in a week, I will start at Colorado Film School, with a dramatic limp and a basketball sized hematoma hanging off my left hip. But for this first night of freedom, I have only one thing in mind.

We head to a local brewpub in Rapid City. I order a steak, along with my first legal beer. 

V

So, about that hematoma. In the days before we head back to Denver, multiple doctors assure my mom and me that, despite its current size, the hematoma will be reabsorbed back into my body. I just need to be patient. We trust them. Weeks go by. Then months. Nothing. The bulging mass of flesh and fluid remains, haphazardly hanging from my hip. My worry grows while my confidence plummets.

This kicks off a rather dark period in my life. I’ve been self-conscious about my weight and body since I was a little kid. It’s one of those wounds that runs deep for me. But in the months after the fall, when I look into the mirror, I not only see the weight I packed on during college, but I see a body that’s now unmistakably misshapen, grotesque, elephantine. It fucks with an already-fragile sense of self-worth. I feel out of place at my new film school. I take to wearing clothes that are many sizes too big, in an attempt to hide my body, to hide myself. I begin binge eating more and more for the same reason. It’s a downward spiral.

In conversation, I refer to the hematoma semi-affectionately as my “third ass cheek.” Joking about it helps me pretend everything is ok, and deflect how much I detest its existence. People laugh. I laugh. I’m not sure any of these laughs were genuine. That winter, I rewatch David Lynch’s masterful film, The Elephant Man, and I bawl my eyes out.

Seven months after the fall, I’m cleared for surgery to remove the hematoma. Finally. It’s a frigid winter morning in the Denver suburb of Aurora when I enter the hospital, and it’s sunny and warm the next morning when I leave. An auspicious sign. But two days later, when the swelling subsides, my third ass cheek is still there. It’s slightly smaller, perhaps, but the only thing that’s clearly changed is that I now have a long, 14-inch scar running horizontally along my hip. I’m both livid and resigned at the same time. Maybe I’ll just have to live with this thing forever. 

18 more months pass before I’m cleared to see someone who specializes in making bodies look better—a plastic surgeon. I’m clearly not his normal clientele, and this is not his normal type of work, but he’s happy to take a crack at it and take the insurance money. (On a side note, thank God for the workman’s comp from the national parks. Without it, I’d have been financially hobbled for life.) The plastic surgeon succeeds in his task, making my body look somewhat symmetrical again. He leaves another 14-inch vertical scar that intersects with the old one. I think my hip looks pretty cool now. X marks the spot.

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Postscript: I regret to inform you, dear reader, that the time-lapse video at the heart of this story—the one I risked my life to get—was a total dud. The battery on my camera died early in the night, so instead of 15-20 seconds of awe-inspiring night  sky footage, I got about 2 seconds. And those short seconds weren’t half as cool as I thought they’d be when setting up the shot. Oh well.

The moral of this story: If you’re going to risk life and limb to get a badass time-lapse of the night sky, make sure you invest in proper batteries. Those cheap knockoffs you get on Amazon ain’t gonna cut it.

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An invitation

For the last few weeks, I’ve been experimenting with writing coaching and enjoying the heck out of it. Turns out, helping people get unstuck with their writing comes naturally to me in a way that other types of coaching do not. It’s pretty wild to experience ease and enjoyment after years of believing that “adding value” had to be difficult. Anyhow, if you’re feeling the call to write and express yourself online, but are blocked up or stuck in your head, I would be genuinely delighted to help. ✨