When I watched a friend nearly die
Mastery of the fundamentals matters most | A Star Wars reminder
Quite a few people die every year doing my hobby, rock climbing. Compared to drowning deaths or even deaths weight lifting in gyms, maybe it’s not that much. Roughly 30 people fall to their death every 365 days climbing rock faces outside and inside at gyms. Just yesterday my climbing group text sent out yet another story of a college-age climber making a fatal mistake out on a wall. It feels like it happens more often than it does.
One of the coaches at my gym (yes, the coach!) almost died last month in the gym when he fell from atop a wall. The man forgot to clip himself into the rope. He fell and had to be taken away in a helicopter if the medics were going to save his leg. How on earth does that happen….
One final story. I was out at Buzzard Rock in Virginia two months ago climbing with two friends. One of them fell. She could have been killed. This very experienced climber needed to rappel down the mountainside and did so without having any of us double-check the ropes and knots she had tied before descending.
Then she fell. We heard the yelp and the crash as our friend hit the rocks far, far below. She bounced off the rock surface and then tumbled down the mountainside about 15 feet before thankfully hitting a tree, which stopped her from going any further. Remarkably, no broken bones. Just a ton of scrapes and ugly cuts.
Her rappel system had worked. The ropes didn’t snap. Her harness was fine. So what happened?
The Basics are what save your life
I have to think a lot about this. I’m not the only climber in my house. It’s also the sport of choice for my wife and my child. We do it together. The other day I was reading Star Wars: Master & Apprentice, a book by Claudia Gray about the apprenticeship of Obi-Wan Kenobi under Qui-Gon Jinn. Something stood out to me as the answer to all of this.
Kenobi is young and very frustrated by his training under Qui-Gon. He thinks Qui-Gon dislikes him and doesn’t trust him to do more difficult missions, combat forms, and tasks.
In his regular lightsaber training sessions, Qui-Gon has refused to advance Obi-Wan to the more advanced techniques of saber combat. The cool stuff. The spins. The flourishes. The moves that make a warrior look super cool in battle, like we see later on for Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in Star Wars: Episode I when they face Darth Maul.
Kenobi has asked his master many times to explain why he isn’t being allowed to advance. Qui-Gon would never tell him. Then they have a near-death experience, and Obi-Wan asks again. So Qui-Gon finally answers:
“Many Padawans — and full Jedi Knights for that matter — forget that the most basic technique is the most important technique. The purest. The most likely to protect you in battle, and the foundation of all knowledge that is to come. Most apprentices want to rush ahead to styles of fighting that are flashier and more esoteric. Most masters let them, because we must all find our preferred form eventually. But I wanted you to be grounded in your technique, to understand the basic cadences so well that they would become instinct so that you would be almost untouchable. Above all, I wanted to give you the training you needed to accomplish anything you set your mind to later on.”
Obi-Wan was grateful. After all, they had just survived a very bad situation where his foundational training had finally come in handy. He had entered a flow state in battle, where he barely had to think about what he was doing in order to ward off their attackers. This is the mark of mastery.
But it is tedious. Routine driven. Unsexy.
The fundamentals are what saved his life, and Qui-Gon’s for that matter. Careless mistakes can happen for any reason, but they are most likely to come from excess. Trying to do too much at once. Thinking, instead of acting in total knowledge.
“Tie your damn knots”
In rock climbing, there are few basic things you do to not die. You inspect your harness before every climb. You “flake” out the rope you’re climbing with to check for signs of damage or tearing, going over it inch by inch. You wear a helmet. You and your partner recite some commands to each other before the climb begins, which involves doing a quality check on the mechanical devices and the knot that you’ve tied near your waist.
But there’s another knot you have to tie. Our friend at Buzzard Rock didn’t tie it. And it’s one of the leading causes of death in climbing.
“Tie your ******** knots” is a common utterance in my climbing group text.
When you’re climbing, there are two ends of a rope (duh). You’re on one side, and on the other end of the rope, you must tie it into what’s called a Stopper Knot. That knot is what will stop you from sliding right off the end of that rope if your partner were to drop you or be knocked unconscious, or something.
When my friend was rappelling down the mountain, she didn’t realize the rock face was longer than the rope she was using. She was about 15 feet short when the rope ran out. Can you visualize it? The rope dangling before her as she descends the mountain, and the bottom of the rope is 15 feet off the ground instead of touching the rock at the bottom.
She had no knot at the end of the rope. This is Step #1 is preparing to climb. The first (maybe second) thing you do while getting ready.
One of the next steps is having a buddy system where you both do checks. Myself and the third person were working on a separate task, and when we looked up our partner was already out over the cliff’s edge. Rushed.
When she reached that point of the rope, well, that was the end. She came right off it and fell. She’s lucky to be alive.
Go through the motions.
Mind details.
The basics are what save your life.
The fundamentals are what set you free to do great things.
This is the way.
If you’re new here
Welcome! We’re thrilled you’re here on This Is The Way, a Substack dedicated to finding worthwhile life lessons in Star Wars and other great works of fiction. Our favorite stories should be making us better people, and that’s what you’ll find here on This Is The Way.
We also have a YouTube channel called Walk The Way, featuring videos inspired by the articles you read here. Here are two to get you started!
Even the most experienced pilots use checklists before a flight.