Reflection
Touched by the Void
By Gary Fallesen
Joe Simpson was lying on a ledge in a crevasse, having fallen 150 feet. His situation was dire. He’d suffered a badly broken leg while on descent from the summit of 21,000-foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. His climbing partner, Simon Yates, had lowered him by rope at 300-foot increments until he faced the decision of a lifetime. With Simpson hanging over the edge of a cliff, unable to go up or down or even communicate with his partner, Yates had a choice. He could cling to the rope until he was pulled off the mountainside with Simpson or he could do the unthinkable and cut the rope.
He cut the rope.
Now Simpson finds himself alone, staring into the abyss of a seemingly endless crevasse. No apparent way out. Death closing in.
Simpson, the author of Touching the Void, the 1988 climbing masterpiece that was turned by director Kevin Macdonald into an equally breathtaking film, talks about growing up in England a "devout Catholic."
"I’d long since stopped believing in God," he confesses in the docudrama, adding that – at this bleak moment in time – "it never once occurred to me" to cry out to God.
"I really don’t believe. When you die you die. That’s it – no afterlife."
Simpson obviously lived to see another day. He went on to become a prize-winning author, and returned to his beloved mountains. He endured an incredible downclimb – actually a downcrawl – to survive that fateful first-ascent of Siula Grande.
In Touching the Void he speaks about how big mountains make you feel very small, something I’m sure most climbers have felt. As Simpson is shown crawling across a crevasse-strewn glacier, he speaks of wondering if "there’s some sort of malign presence that’s out to get you." He compares it to "teasing an ant," where you put down a series of obstacles until "eventually (you’re) going to stand on it." This is his view of our God.
Nearing the end, Simpson admits to an overwhelming feeling of loneliness. "That sense of being abandoned. … I wanted to be with someone when I died." He longed for a warm embrace.
Simpson never found a peace – on Siula Grande or since escaping it. As one of our climbing brothers put it, "Too bad he did not find the Lord on that climb. But he made the choice." Simpson turned his back – as so many other climbers have done. He needn’t have felt alone; he had someone by his side who would never cut the rope, who would never sever that lifeline. He needed only to cry out His name and he would have felt the warmest embrace.
If, when the end truly does come for Simpson, he has still refused to recognize that there is a God, if he doesn’t believe in Him, he will not have escaped death after all.
Touching the Void is available on DVD. It is a two-thumbs-up climbing film, but contains strong language. The book by Simpson remains one of the must-reads of mountaineering literature. This commentary originally appeared in Climbing For Christ E-Newsletter No. 10 (Feb. 16, 2004). |