Book of the dayAutobiography and memoirReviewIn 2018 Claire Nelson took a lone hike in the desert. She shattered her pelvis in a fall and ran out of water. She has written a gripping account of her determination to survive
Who can resist triumph over adversity? It is the stuff of many Ted Talks and muscular films and popular books. If the adversity includes wildness and the elements, even better. A shark, a self-amputated arm, a bear or two. I do not mock. I enjoyed Claire Nelson’s book and it is valuable. This is no misery memoir, but a thoughtful exploration of what happens when a human being is removed from all that keeps her safe, with no hope of rescue – and how she survives that shock.
Nelson, a New Zealander, was a magazine sub-editor in London with a life filled with friends, drinking, socialising. But her friends kept departing for other countries and continents, and she was left with the other aspects of London life: emptiness and ennui. She followed her friends and left, moving to Canada, then to two weeks’ housesitting in Joshua Tree in the California desert. There is nothing novel about her renaissance so far: open spaces and big skies lift her spirits. Nelson has always been a hiker, and so she intends to hike, although this is desert country.
She is experienced enough to carry five litres of water, but experience does not stop her making a mistake. She sets off for a hike to the Lost Palms Oasis, and does not tell any friends or family. She mentions it to a ranger in the visitors’ centre, but it is casually done. The centre has no formal checking-in system, which she rightly questions.
The walk goes horrifically wrong, and after a fall Nelson finds herself in a secluded gully with a shattered pelvis, unable to move. She is very unlikely to be found. There is no phone signal. There is only her and pain and time and the desert, to be endured.
The account of her experience after the fall is the strongest section of the book. It is gripping, and an achievement all the more remarkable as in fact very little happens. Time passes. Pain continues. Water runs out. And Nelson thinks. Her particular circumstances allow for an intimate examination of a brain under stress. She thinks about life and her regrets. One is obvious: “The amount of time that I spent – that I wasted – pissing about on the internet.” In London, she thinks, “I wore my smartphone like a boredom prosthetic.” She also regrets resisting help, and in the middle of a sociable lifestyle, being closed to people.
The vast emptiness of time is filled with obstacles she encounters – providing shade and dealing with her lack of water. She takes the decision to drink her urine. This later got many headlines, but she is impressively matter-of-fact about it. The only liquid she can access is her own, so she uses it She watches a hawk circling above, and “fear ran cold through my blood as I considered where I now fell in the chain of desert life. Potential prey”. She remembers a coyote she saw that morning, and it multiplies in her mind to hordes of them, waiting. The night brings no relief apart from shade: instead there is the primal, dark fear of the invisible, and of creatures that move more than she can.
This is a vibrantly physical book. Nelson’s body is central in its horrifying pain and immobility. Her thirst is ferocious, but her appetite leaves her in peace. “Hunger felt like an entirely fictional concept to me now ... My body had shut off my appetite like an electrician turning off the mains power, cravings and fancies shut down, taste’s sensory synapses still, everything faded to black.”
It is difficult not to warm to Nelson, and I waited anxiously for her rescue. She isn’t always the most lyrical or stylish of writers, but she is genuine: determined that she will survive, “because this is not how my story ends”. In fact it is her internet habit that saves Nelson: her absence from Facebook and Instagram is noted and triggers an alarm that leads to her rescue that leads to hospital and a can of Diet Coke that she has dreamed of constantly for the four days in the gully. “For once in my life I didn’t have the capacity to squirm about kindness being offered to me – instead I welcomed it in, and realised how good it felt to do so.”
Soon after I finished this book, I read about a hiker missing in a vast park somewhere. I thought of where they might be, with only hawks and fear and waiting for company, and was glad of my safety, and held it tight.
Things I Learned from Falling is published by Octopus. (RRP £12.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.
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