Stoicism

This time of year, pretty much every Sunday morning there is a call arising from the adventurous spirit that people come up to these mountains to exercise. Today's was a young man who had decided to take charge of his slide into obesity and, having already lost forty pounds, to hike down into a gorge to see some famous local waterfalls. Unfortunately for him, he stepped on a yellow jacket nest and -- while trying to escape them -- gruesomely broke his ankle, fell, tumbled, and struck his head. 

Fortunately, another pair of hikers were on the trail one of whom happened to be a nurse. He stayed with the injured guy while his girlfriend (or wife, I'm not sure) went for help. Now there's no cell-phone service in these mountains most places, but there is a church nearby. Most of the week it's just an empty building, but this was Sunday morning. As a result she found it full of people, one of whom was an older man who had formerly been an active firefighter, and who was still in the habit of carrying his radio. Thus she was able to summon aid very quickly. 

The young man in the gorge was badly hurt, but he showed significant character. In addition to having internally recognized his slide and taken charge of it, he had developed the understanding that he could also be in charge of his emotional reaction even to very bad things. He was polite, tried to laugh and joke in spite of his injuries and shock, and refused to get more upset than he could help. His fate was not in his hands, but his attitude was, and his recognition of that helped him and it helped everyone else who was trying to help him. 

We got him out of the gorge with a basket and a rope system, and thence to a helicopter called in to get him to a hospital. I hope they'll save his foot. I later met his brother because I had to return their dog, who was hiking with him at the time of his injury. For whatever reason she decided I was the one there she would trust, so I ended up taking her and his Buick and driving them over to where his family could collect them. 

By coincidence, shortly after turning over the dog and car I met again with the nurse and lady. They were up on vacation, and were eager to hear how the whole thing had turned out. Nice folks, although I was amused at how perfectly their discussion matched up with the description given by the White Fragility author of bad ways white people allegedly talk to minorities -- in their case, however, they were of foreign extraction, and talking about Southerners. 'Everyone thinks you're all prejudiced up here, and still think it's 1956,' they said, 'But we know you're not all like that. We wanted to meet real people, not all these folks with the Audis and Mercedes in the parking lot here in this town. We could meet them anywhere. We wanted to get out where the real people are.' Well, thanks. (And cf. the descriptions also here and here, which I was looking at again last night following the discussion on Tex's post.)

Nice folks anyway, the kind of people who'd stop to help you on a trail if you needed it. That's what really counts.