Look before you throw

In nature there are neither rewards nor punishments; there are consequences. –Robert Green Ingersoll

Years ago now, I sat at a business dinner determined not to talk about business. We were in Sydney, I believe, amidst people who actually work to live and not the other way around. I knew we Americans needed something more than numbers and bar charts and statistics to help us make it through all the dinner courses.

“Let’s ask people about the greatest lesson they’ve ever learned,” I suggested to Mr Brilliant as we dressed for the dinner. “What’s yours?”

And here’s what he told me, a tiny story that intrigued all of us at dinner later that evening, for its simplicity and its truth:

“When I was 12 years old at camp, I learned a big lesson from Mr Overbye, the science teacher. Someone gave me a pair of waders, so I put them on and was stomping around in the middle of a small pond when Mr Overbye came up to me. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘Just playing around,’ I answered. ‘Just trying out these boots.’ Mr Overbye stood still and looked at me, silently. ‘You are killing more life than you could possibly know,’ Mr Overbye finally said. ‘Every step you take, you are destroying whole systems of life.’”

“It made an impression on me,” John told us at dinner. “That we never know how our behavior has an impact on whole ecosystems. Just one step, and I’ve wiped out a colony….”

It was a story that immediately came to mind this week when Mr Brilliant called with tragic news, the senseless death of a colleague’s 47-year-old son while climbing, a death caused not by a natural rockfall, but by a young man on top of the mountain flinging a bowling ball-sized rock over the edge for fun, without checking first to see if there were climbers below. The rock hit Pete Absolon’s white helmet and killed him instantly.

John has known Pete Absolon’s father for decades, but hadn’t talked to him for months until he called to tell the story of Pete’s awful death.

A renowned climber and Rocky Mountain regional director of the National Outdoor Leadership School, Pete Absolon went with a friend for a weekend climb, a challenging climb, but not a serious one. Pete Absolon had a six-year-old daughter at home, and wasn’t taking chances. He took along a friend and climbing partner, Steve Herlihy. The story of that awful day is told beautifully here; some excerpts follow:

Herlihy was tired and ready to head down to camp. But Absolon wanted to nail the last pitch, and Herlihy agreed that it didn’t look like much trouble, particularly with Pete in the lead. But right in the middle of their conversation, something came hurtling down from above. There was no warning, Herlihy recalls. Just a sudden crack!—and then a kind of white noise buzzing inside his head.

As soon as he heard the sound, Herlihy instinctively curled up next to the wall. But whatever had ripped through was already gone, leaving silence in its wake. When Herlihy looked up, he saw Pete hanging from the ropes, staring straight ahead. His eyes and mouth were open, but he was absolutely still.

Herlihy reached up. His hand went to the back of Absolon’s neck and felt a warm dampness. He turned his friend around and saw the shards of his white helmet, the blood, the crushed skull. "His face was perfect," Herlihy says, "but I just knew he was dead."

This would be a tragic story even if the rock had fallen. It is all the more tragic because it was a rock thrown by a young man on the ledge above. It wasn’t a rock falling, but a rock being thrown that killed Pete Absolon. Not maliciously, but thrown nonetheless, without considering the consequences.

Around five, the Rodolph party decided to make their way to a new spot a quarter-mile away, where the rim becomes a series of jagged overhangs above the basin—a good place to watch rocks fall, they figured. Luke led the way to a 15-foot promontory jutting into space. He went out a few feet, peered over the right edge, picked up a bowling-ball-size hunk of granite, and launched it into the void. Then he crouched down and leaned farther over the edge to watch its descent.

His new position gave him an unimpeded view of the area below. He saw, to his surprise, two men in white helmets 200 feet beneath him. And at the same moment he registered their presence, the plummeting rock struck one of the men directly on the head.

Steve Herlihy made the awful, but necessary decision, to leave his friend hanging there while he climbed down for help.

Herlihy retrieved his dogs and dunked his head in the lake, trying to wash off the blood and spitting to get rid of the pungent, metallic taste in his mouth. He looked around in the twilight, not sure what to do. He was startled to see four young men running toward him. The first one was crying.

"I’m so sorry for your loss," Aaron Rodolph said. He was panting after the long run down from the rim.

"What happened?" Herlihy asked.

A pale, lean young man, more subdued than the first, approached him. "I threw a rock," he said.

Herlihy stared at him. "Did it hit another rock or something?"

"No," Luke Rodolph said. "That was the rock."

Herlihy took a moment to digest this. It wasn’t a loose rock that had killed his friend. This kid had thrown the rock. Herlihy didn’t know what to say. What came out of his mouth next amazed the Rodolph brothers, who were half expecting him to attack them. He looked at Luke and said, "I forgive you."

We must see ourselves part of an intricate ecosystem, at every moment connected to others we know and don’t know and can’t know. We must consider more fully the consequences of our actions.

37days Do it now Challenge

Before you wade into the pond, and before you throw that rock, look over the edge. Consider that what we do (or don’t do, say or don’t say) matters so much, particularly to those climbing below us. Our actions have impact.

[Photo of Pete Absolon]