What a harrowing fall in the desert taught Claire Nelson about life and regrets

After four days lying on the desert floor, immobilized from a broken pelvis, Claire Nelson had an epiphany: "What a waste of time fear can be."

In 2018, the London, England-based writer fell some 4.5 metres during a solo hike in Joshua Tree National Park near Palm Springs, Calif. 

Nelson spent the next three nights on the sand doing everything possible to shelter herself from the blistering sun and treacherous nights.

All the while, the harrowing experience offered her the opportunity to reflect on life and regrets — an inward journey that she says surprised her.

"I wasn't expecting my real regrets to be what they turned out to be," Nelson told Day 6 guest host Saroja Coelho. 

"I was wasting so much of my life on the internet, on social media, using it as a way to just really curate the best parts of myself and keep the parts of myself I was ashamed of hidden away."

Three years after the ordeal, Nelson chronicles those self-discoveries in a new memoir, Things I Learned From Falling.

"So much of what gets in our way is fear-based and it's so predominantly self-invented," she said.

'Everything went in slow motion'

Originally from New Zealand, but living in Toronto at the time, Nelson visited the park while in California to house sit for friends.

In the book, Nelson recalls her experience in the California desert with vivid clarity. 

"The moment I fell is going to be etched in my memory for the rest of my life," she said. "I was testing my footing on some boulders to get across a large boulder stack, and it's something that I've done so many times in hiking."

When the boulder she stepped on started sliding, "everything went in slow motion, and I remember my brain telling me you're about to get hurt."

Before she felt any pain, Nelson heard the crack of her breaking bones as she met the ground. Instinctively, she tried to stand, but couldn't sit up. Still, she could wiggle her toes — "I knew I wasn't paralyzed," Nelson said.

But it quickly became obvious the situation was life or death, she said. With no cell phone service — and having wandered far off the marked trail — Nelson reacted the only way she could: with a scream.

"In my mind, I was going, 'If I scream loud enough, maybe it'll just catch on a breeze and somebody on another part of the park will just happen to hear it,'" she told Day 6.

"It doesn't matter how implausible that possibility is, you will hang onto it for dear life because that's all you have."

As night fell, Nelson says the "tone changed" — the temperature dropped and her imagination began to play tricks on her. "My blood would run cold every time I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye," she recalled. 

When she awoke the next morning, she believed the worst was behind her. But it wouldn't be for another two nights, alone and aching in the hole where she had landed, that members of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department would find her after friends noticed she stopped posting on Instagram and a neighbour found her car in the parking lot.

On the fourth day, a helicopter searching for Nelson spotted her. Unable to land in the desert, rescuers hiked the trail to find her and she was airlifted to hospital, according to the Palm Springs Desert Sun.

She said her belief that she would survive the ordeal is what kept her going those four days.

"I would think of the people in my life I wanted to see again. I was thinking of goals I still had for myself. And I am a very stubborn person," she said. "Those things can really keep you going when everything else is against you."

Return to the trail

While exploring what drove her fears and what kept her going, Nelson also channeled gratitude for the things in her life.

"It sounds strange to say: it was a really nice moment to come to," she said. "There was so much gratitude there for the life that I had lived, and I didn't want to let go of that."

It also brought her peace as she recognized she could die in the very spot she was sitting.

Nelson admits that she had become too comfortable hiking on her own before the fall that almost ended her life. 

She hadn't told friends or family where she was going, or when she would be back — something she now recognizes as her biggest mistake. 

Despite her horrifying experience, once recovered Nelson returned to the trail in Joshua Tree National Park in January 2019.

Asked why, Nelson said she doesn't have an answer but apart from feeling it was something she needed to do.

"I was still in the hospital and I knew that I was going to go back. And I mean, something about it, I guess, was about wanting to get closure — to feel like this hadn't got the better of me."

The fall didn't stop her from hiking in other places either.

"Some people said, 'Well, why would you want to go hiking again?' It's because I love it and now I'm not going to die, which means I get to do more of it," she said.

"And so I couldn't think of a more perfect place to go than back to the trail."

Written by Jason Vermes with files from CBC News. Interview produced by Laurie Allen.

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