Story Frame 66 – Danny Boyle & The Night Before Christmas

Now that we lived in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina, Leif, too, started hiking with friends.

I loved and supported this, but it also gave me something new to worry about. Would he hike prepared? Would he know what to do should something unexpected happen? Did he know what to do – and, more importantly, what not to do – if he saw a black bear? That wasn’t unusual around here, we’d even had black bears in our own gardens.

I had seen Grizzly Man at Silverdocs Film Festival a few years earlier, Werner Herzog’s non-fiction film about the life and horrific death of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend, Ann Huguenard at Katmai National Park in Alaska. The audio track to that film is something I’ll never get out of my head.

That incident involved a brown bear and not a black bear, yet now that we lived in the mountains, bear encounters was one more thing I chose to spend precious brain space obsessing over.

So when Danny Boyle’s film 127 Hours was playing at Asheville’s Fine Arts Theatre in 2010, I decided to take Leif with me to see it. After Slumdog Millionaire, I was keen to see any film Danny Boyle made. And for anyone who hikes in the mountains, I was pretty sure it might teach us both important lessons. I also thought it might be a more effective scare tactic for Leif than hearing advice from his mother.

Based upon Aron Ralston's 2004 memoir Between a Rock and a Hard Place – 127 Hours is billed as a vivid “hallucinogenic survival film” based on the true story of the five days Ralston, an avid mountaineer played by James Franco, spent in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park after falling and getting his arm pinned under an 800-pound boulder.

An experienced mountaineer, Ralston had gone hiking without thinking to tell anyone. After his fall, nobody knew where he was. Realizing he is completely on his own, he begins recording a video diary with his camcorder to help keep his spirits up as he tries to chip away at the boulder with his pocketknife. For five days, Ralston rations his precious remaining food and water as he loses all sensation in his trapped arm. Increasingly depressed and desperate, he begins hallucinating about escape and past experiences. On the sixth day, inspired by a hallucinatory vision of his future son, he fashions a tourniquet, methodically breaks the bones in his arm, then slowly amputates it in order to free himself and find help.

It was a real head trip watching it. I worried Leif might have lost interest, but he surprised me when he said he really liked how the film portrayed Ralston's interior mental and emotional journey. On the way home, he appeared lost in thought as I yattered away about safety issues.

I slept peacefully that night, happy my point had been made. Another item off the list of the potential perils of raising kids in the mountains of Appalachia, I thought.

We saw 127 Hours the week before Christmas. Not long after the sun set on Christmas Eve, Leif found me in the kitchen.

“C’mon, Mom,” he said urgently, with a smile. “Let’s open presents!”

“You want to already?” I asked. Now that the kids were older, we opened our presents, in the Danish tradition, by candlelight on Christmas Eve. “Yup,” he insisted cheerfully.

“Okay,” I said. I went into the living room, turned on the lights on the Christmas tree in front of the wall of windows overlooking the bird sanctuary and lake. The colors sparkled in the softly lit room. I lit the candles and poured myself a glass of red wine. Together, Leif and I pulled the presents from underneath the tree and set them on the floor by the sofa and coffee table for easy opening. Our dogs, Bandit and Klejne, wandered in to see what was happening and if it included food.

“Start with your stocking!” Leif said to me as soon as I was settled.

“What for?” I asked, unable to remember the last time anything had been put into it –a sad fact that never stopped me from hanging it up just for decoration.

“Just do it!” he said, grinning.

Going over to the fireplace mantel, I noticed the stocking was bulging slightly. I reached in and to my surprise, found several small packages.

Leif watched me carefully, not taking his eyes off me, not even to tear into his own presents.

I opened the first package and found an emergency hooded lightweight poncho.

“That’s really thoughtful, thank you!” I said, kind of surprised such a practical gift would occur to Leif. I set it aside to put into my hiking backpack.

“Open the others!” he commanded.

And so, I did. One by one, I discovered a magnesium fire-starter, an emergency mylar blanket, and a bear bell – all useful things for hiking and camping.

I was super impressed by his thoughtfulness and started to tell him so.

"Wait!" he said. "There’s one more!"

Curious, I undid the wrapping. Inside, I found a small emergency commando pocket wire saw, capable, I noticed, of cutting through bone. I looked up at my son.

"In case you're ever stuck between rocks," Leif said, cheerfully, “you'll be able to saw your arm off!"

For his portrayal of Ralston, James Franco was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

The following spring or summer, Leif was back in Asheville after his freshman (and only) year at SCAD, the Savannah College of Art & Design. One evening, when he was hanging out with friends outside the Thirsty Monk in downtown Asheville, he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He turned around and there was James Franco.

Franco smiled, held up a disposable camera and asked if he could take Leif’s picture.

“Okay,” Leif said shrugging his shoulders good naturedly.

When he told me about this later, I thought Leif might now have been the one hallucinating.

“Are you sure it was him?” I asked skeptically.

“Yup,” Leif said.

I checked it out and learned Franco was, in fact, taking classes at nearby Warren Wilson College. He’d already earned an MFA in poetry and was now working on his MFA in fiction.

He was apparently often seen in downtown Asheville and Leif just happened to be in the same place at the same time. Leif thought it was pretty cool that a famous actor was not fending off selfie requests but instead, asking if he could take photos of others.

As for Ralston, years later he got married and had that son he’d seen in his hallucinations. He also continues climbing and always leaves a note telling his family where he has gone.

Coming up next … Story Frame 67 – Finding Prometheus: Life on the Other Side of 52