The Ever-Sad Thrill of Death

Saman Kunan

Each time I hear about the diver who died after bringing O2 to the kids in the Thai cave yesterday I feel so sad. 

I live in Vancouver, BC. In our province we have many high mountains and rushing rivers, snowfields and waterfalls. We rest against a broad ocean and there are endless tracks in our forests. Ten minutes from the city you can go off the trail for an adventure and find yourself hopelessly lost.

Three young adventurers, who made their living filming themselves doing daring thngs in nature, died this week in falls I have camped near several times. Their friends and families are mourning and in shock. When these things happen, as they do so very often here, amongst the tears I hear expressions meant to console--that they died doing something they loved.

Saman Kunan died because a group of children, led by an adult, went on an extremely dangerous lark as the result of a dare. He may have been doing something he loved, but he wasn't doing it for fun, and he wasn't risking other people's lives to enjoy himself.

He isn't the first rescuer to die in the attempt of saving other lives.

I didn't know Saman or his family but I am feeling grief for him which is accentuated by years of hearing stories like this on the radio, over and over again, of people going unprepared into the backcountry or of difficult, heroic attempts to peel daredevils off of cliff-faces. I do also grieve for the young people who have not yet learned that they aren't invulnerable, whose joy in their strength and physicality and the thrill of risk is not tempered by sufficient belief that staying alive is thrilling, too. It was one year ago to the day from the death of the three vloggers at Shannon Falls that the young Irish footballer, David Gavin, drowned when he dove into the churning waters of a river near Golden, BC. He knew he could handle it. They knew they could handle it.

What is my point? That people shouldn't take risks? That we should leave them to it if they do stupid things that risk their lives and our own?

I don't know that I have a point, actually. Sometimes when I hear these things, some guy in flip flops who decided to leave the designated trails and ends up with a three day all out search through the mountainside, I get huffy like my parents would and grumble, "Leave him up there! Make him pay for the rescue!" and other such sympathetic things. So sure, the sheer waste of it angers me, too.

But right now I'm overwhelmingly sad. Sad at a world where peoples en masse are facing abuse and death trying to escape their violent and impoverished homelands. Sad at a world where men like he-who-shall-not-be-named are doing everything they can to roll back the rights of the environment and the humans who dwell in it. Sad at young people who throw their lives and those of their rescuers away for a thrill.