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The Butterfly Circus
Short film-on Youtube

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Theme

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Year 9

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Still I Rise (In Depth) Teacher Notes

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Still I Rise. Depth Anyalsis. Teacher resource

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Still I Rise - Teacher Notes

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Adversity and Perseverance in Poetry

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Analysing Song Lyrics

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Analysing Song Lyrics

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Students understand that the elements of a text work together to support the theme. They learn that • themes draw together the elements of a text • themes can be indicated through patterns in texts such as a motif, parallel plots or characters • there may be major and minor themes • themes are traditionally thought to provide insight into the world view of the author • themes may be challenged by considering representation in the text from a different perspective.

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Theme - What it is.

A theme is a statement about life, arising from the interplay of key elements of the text such as plot, character, setting and language. These work together in a coherent way to achieve the purpose of the text. Theme differs from the topic of a text (war, the sea) or an idea addressed by a text (prejudice, friendship) in that the theme conveys an attitude or value about an idea (By accepting difference we are enriched. True friendship survives adversity). At its most basic level a theme may be regarded as the message or even the moral of a text. Themes may be used for a didactic purpose or may add a philosophical dimension, inviting us to think about our place in the world. A theme is a statement about human experience that is profound and which responders may accept or reject, depending on their own worldview.

Why it is important.

Identifying themes is a higher order skill, moving students beyond the stated details of the text to consider the ideas implied by these details. By explaining how themes emerge students come to an understanding of how individual elements of a text cohere to serve a theme. Understanding the themes of a text gives students insight into what is valued by a culture and the extent to which they may identify with, accept or challengethese values.

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Malala (Article)

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Malala (Article)

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One year ago schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen - her "crime", to have spoken up for the right of girls to be educated. The world reacted in horror, but after weeks in intensive care Malala survived. Her full story can now be told.

She is the teenager who marked her 16th birthday with a live address from UN headquarters, is known around the world by her first name alone, and has been lauded by a former British prime minister as "an icon of courage and hope".

I didn't want my future to be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth
Malala Yousafzai

She is also a Birmingham schoolgirl trying to settle into a new class, worrying about homework and reading lists, missing friends from her old school, and squabbling with her two younger brothers.

She is Malala Yousafzai, whose life was forever changed at age 15 by a Taliban bullet on 9 October 2012.

I have travelled to her home town in Pakistan, seen the school that moulded her, met the doctors who treated her and spent time with her and her family, for one reason - to answer the same question barked by the gunman who flagged down her school bus last October: "Who is Malala?"

The Swat Valley once took pride in being called "the Switzerland of Pakistan". It's a mountainous place, cool in summer and snowy in winter, within easy reach of the capital, Islamabad. And when Malala was born in 1997 it was still peaceful.

Just a few hours' driving from Islamabad brings you to the foot of the Malakand pass, the gateway to the valley. The winding road up to the pass leaves the plains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, far below.

I remember it well from childhood holidays in Pakistan. But my latest trip felt very different - the BBC crew made the journey with a military escort. Although the Pakistan army retook control of Swat from the Taliban in 2009 and it is arguably now safer for foreigners than some other areas, the military clearly didn't want to take any chances.

Historically, the north-west has been one of Pakistan's least developed regions. But Swat, interestingly, has long been a bright spot in terms of education.

Find out more

Watch Mishal Husain's Panorama special on Malala on Monday 7 October at 20:30 BST on BBC One
Malala: Shot for Going to School
Until 1969, it was a semi-autonomous principality - its ruler known as the Wali. The first of these was Miangul Gulshahzada Sir Abdul Wadud, appointed by a local council in 1915 and known to Swatis as "Badshah Sahib" - the King. Although himself uneducated, he laid the foundation for a network of schools in the valley - the first boys' primary school came in 1922, followed within a few years by the first girls' school.

The trend was continued by his son, Wali Miangul Abdul Haq Jahanzeb, who came to power in 1949. Within a few months, he had presented the schoolgirls of Swat to the visiting prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, and his wife Raana. As his grandson Miangul Adnan Aurangzeb says: "It would have been unusual anywhere else in the [North-West] Frontier at that time, but in Swat girls were going to school."

The new Wali's focus soon turned to high schools and colleges, including Jahanzeb College, founded in 1952, where Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, would study many years later. Soon, Swat became known across Pakistan for the number of professionals it was producing - especially doctors and teachers. As Adnan Aurangzeb says, "Swat was proud of its record on education... one way to identify a Swati outside of Swat was that he always had a pen in his chest pocket, and that meant he was literate."

Against this backdrop, the fate that befell the schools of Swat in the first years of the 21st Century is particularly tragic.

By the time Malala was born, her father had realised his dream of founding his own school, which began with just a few pupils and mushroomed into an establishment educating more than 1,000 girls and boys.

It is clear that her absence is keenly felt. Outside the door of her old classroom is a framed newspaper cutting about her. Inside, her best friend Moniba has written the name "Malala" on a chair placed in the front row.

This was Malala's world - not one of wealth or privilege but an atmosphere dominated by learning. And she flourished. "She was precocious, confident, assertive," says Adnan Aurangzeb. "A young person with the drive to achieve something in life."

In that, she wasn't alone. "Malala's whole class is special," headmistress Mariam Khalique tells me.

Malala's diary: 3 January 2009

I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat.

My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools

Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taleban's edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict.
Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl Faces of the year: Malala and others Schoolgirls in Birmingham on Malala
And from the moment I walk in, I understand what she means. Their focus and attention is absolute, their aspirations sky-high. The lesson under way is biology, and as it ends I have a few moments to ask the girls about their future plans - many want to be doctors. One girl's answer stops me in my tracks: "I'd like to be Pakistan's army chief one day."

Malala's diary: 18 January 2009

My father told us that the government would protect our schools. The prime minister has also raised this issue. I was quite happy initially, but now I know but this will not solve our problem.

"Here in Swat we hear everyday that so many soldiers were killed and so many were kidnapped at such and such place. But the police are nowhere to be seen.

"Our parents are also very scared. They told us they would not send us to school until or unless the Taleban themselves announce on the FM channel that girls can go to school. The army is also responsible for the disruption in our education.
Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl (ii)
Part of the reason for this drive to succeed is that only white-collar, professional jobs will allow these girls a life outside their homes. While poorly educated boys can hope to find low-skilled work, their female counterparts will find their earning power restricted to what they can do within the four walls of their home - sewing perhaps.

"For my brothers it was easy to think about the future," Malala tells me when we meet in Birmingham. "They can be anything they want. But for me it was hard and for that reason I wanted to become educated and empower myself with knowledge."

I was surprised that there is a little girl in Swat who can speak with a lot of confidence, but I was concerned about her security
Hamid Mir

It was this future that was threatened when the first signs of Taliban influence emerged, borne on a tide of anti-Western sentiment that swept across Pakistan in the years after 9/11 and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Like other parts of north-west Pakistan, Swat had always been a devout and conservative region, but what was happening by 2007 was very different - radio broadcasts threatening Sharia-style punishments for those who departed from local Muslim traditions, and most ominously, edicts against education.

The worst period came at the end of 2008, when the local Taliban leader, Mullah Fazlullah, issued a dire warning - all female education had to cease within a month, or schools would suffer consequences. Malala remembers the moment well: "'How can they stop us going to school?' I was thinking. 'It's impossible, how can they do it?'"

But Ziauddin Yousafzai and his friend Ahmad Shah, who ran another school nearby, had to recognise it as a real possibility. The Taliban had always followed through on their threats. The two men discussed the situation with local army commanders. "I asked them how much security would be provided to us," Shah recalls. "They said, 'We will provide security, don't close your schools.'"

It was easier said than done.

By this time, Malala was still only 11, but well aware of how things were changing.

"People don't need to be aware of these things at the age of nine or 10 or 11 but we were seeing terrorism and extremism, so I had to be aware," she says.

She knew that her way of life was under threat. When a journalist from BBC Urdu asked her father about young people who might be willing to give their perspective on life under the Taliban, he suggested Malala.

The result was the Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl, a blog for BBC Urdu, in which Malala chronicled her hope to keep going to school and her fears for the future of Swat.

When I saw the blood on Malala, I fell unconscious
Fellow pupil Kainat Riaz

She saw it as an opportunity.

"I wanted to speak up for my rights," she says. "And also I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn't want to see my life in that way."

The blog was anonymous, but Malala was also unafraid to speak out in public about the right to education, as she did in February 2009 to the Pakistani television presenter Hamid Mir, who brought his show to Swat.

"I was surprised that there is a little girl in Swat who can speak with a lot of confidence, who's very brave, who's very articulate," Mir says. "But at the same time I was a bit concerned about her security, about the security of her family."

At that time it was Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala's father, who was perceived to be at the greatest risk. Already known as a social and educational activist, he had sensed that the Taliban would move from the tribal areas of Pakistan into Swat, and had often warned people to be on their guard.

Malala herself was concerned for him. "I was worried about my father," she says. "I used to think, 'What will I do if a Talib comes to the house? We'll hide my father in a cupboard and call the police.'"

No-one thought the Taliban would target a child. There were however notorious incidents where they had chosen to make an example of women. In early 2009, a dancer was accused of immorality and executed, her body put on public display in the centre of Mingora. Soon afterwards, there was outrage across Pakistan after a video emerged from Swat showing the Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl for alleged "illicit relations" with a man.

Ziauddin Yousafzai must have known that Malala's high profile in the valley put her at some risk, even though he could not have foreseen the outcome.

"Malala's voice was the most powerful voice in Swat because the biggest victim of the Taliban was girls' schools and girls' education and few people talked about it," he says. "When she used to speak about education, everybody gave it importance."

By the time Malala was shot in 2012, the worst days of Taliban power in Swat had receded. A high-profile military operation had cleared out most militants but others had stayed behind, keeping a low profile.

"Life was normal for normal people, but for those people who had raised their voice, it was now a risky time," says Malala.

She was one of those people.

On the afternoon of 9 October, she walked out of school as normal and boarded a small bus waiting outside the gates. These vehicles are seen everywhere in Mingora - a little like covered pickup trucks, open at the back, with three lines of benches running the length of the flatbed. Each could carry about 20 people and would be waiting to take the girls and their teachers home at the end of the school day.

In Malala's case, it was only a short journey, past a small clearing where children played cricket, and along the canal bank to her house. Once she had walked, but then her mother, Tor Pekai, intervened. "My mother told me, 'Now you are growing up and people know you, so you must not go on foot, you must go in a car or a bus so then you will be safe,'" Malala says.

That day, she was in the middle of her exams, and had a lot on her mind. But there was still the usual after-school chat and gossip to share with Moniba, who was sitting next to her. But as the bus progressed along its route Malala says she did notice something unusual - the road seemed deserted. "I asked Moniba, 'Why is there no-one here? Can you see it's not like it usually is?'"

Moments later, the bus was flagged down by two young men as it passed a clearing, only 100 yards from the school gates. Malala doesn't recall seeing them but Moniba does. To her they looked like college students.

Then she heard one ask: "Who is Malala?" In the seconds between that question and the firing beginning, Moniba at first wondered if the men were more journalists in search of her well-known friend. But she quickly grasped that Malala had sensed danger. "She was very scared at that time,' she remembers. The girls looked at Malala, thereby innocently identifying her.

Malala's story is just the beginning in the BBC's 100 Women season.

More than a century after women began winning the right to vote, we want to find out what life is like for women today - and what might happen next.

We're planning a unique global event on Friday 25 October. Join in the conversation and tell us what you think on Twitter using #100Women.
Full coverage: BBC 100 Women
The two girls sitting on Malala's other side, Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Riaz, were also injured.

"I heard the firing, then I saw lots of blood on Malala's head," says Kainat. "When I saw that blood on Malala, I fell unconscious."

Moniba says the bus remained there for 10 minutes, before anyone came to the aid of the panic-stricken women and children.

When they reached hospital, it was assumed all four girls were wounded, because Moniba's clothing was drenched in her friend's blood.

News of the shooting spread quickly. Malala's father was at the Press Club when a phone call came to tell him one of his school buses had been attacked. He feared at once that it was Malala who had been targeted. He found her on a stretcher in the hospital.

"When I looked towards her face I just bowed down, I kissed her on the forehead, her nose, and cheeks," he says. "And then I said, 'You're my proud daughter. I am proud of you.'"

The quality of the intensive care was potentially compromising her final outcome
Fiona Reynolds

Malala had been shot in the head and it was clear to everyone, including the Pakistan army, that her life was in danger. A helicopter was scrambled to airlift her to the military hospital in Peshawar - a journey that would eventually take her not just away from Swat but away from Pakistan.

The Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar is the best medical facility in the region, treating not just military personnel but their families too. As he flew in with Malala, Ziauddin Yousafzai was braced for the worst, telling relatives at his family home in rural Swat to make preparations for a funeral. "It really was the most difficult time in my life," he says.

From the helipad, Malala was brought in by ambulance and placed in the care of neurosurgeon Col Junaid Khan.

"She was initially conscious, but restless and agitated, moving all her limbs," he says. The entry wound of the bullet was above her left brow. From there it had travelled down through her neck and lodged in her back.

Malala was treated as a severe head injury case and placed under observation. After four hours, she deteriorated visibly, slipping towards unconsciousness. A scan revealed a life-threatening situation - her brain was swelling dangerously and she would need immediate surgery.

"The part of the brain involved was concerned not only with speech but also giving power to the right arm and leg," Khan says. "So contemplating surgery in this very sensitive area can have risks. The person can be paralysed afterwards."

Nevertheless, he told Malala's father that surgery was vital to save her life - a portion of her skull had to be removed to relieve pressure on the brain.

The procedure began with shaving part of Malala's hair, and then cutting away the bone, before placing the portion of removed skull inside her abdomen in case it could be later replaced. Blood clots and damaged tissue were extracted from inside the brain.

Before that day, Khan says, he had never heard the name Malala Yousafzai, but he was soon left in no doubt that he was treating a high-profile patient. Camera crews besieged the hospital compound as a tide of shock and revulsion spread through Pakistan.

TV presenter Hamid Mir looks back on the attack and the country's realisation that the Taliban were capable of shooting a young girl as a defining moment. "It gave me a lot of courage and strength [a sense] that enough is enough, now is the time to speak against the enemies of education," he says. "If they can target a little girl like Malala, they can target anyone."

From Adnan Aurangzeb, so closely connected to Swat and its people, there was anger - not just at the Taliban but at the government of Pakistan, which he held accountable for failing to protect Malala.

"She should have been under the protection of Pakistan," he says. "Not left to go unescorted like any normal student in an area infested with militants and Taliban."

Inside the intensive care unit in Peshawar, Malala appeared to respond well to the surgery. Her progress was by now being followed not just in Pakistan but around the world. In Islamabad, the army chief General Ashfaq Kayani was taking a keen interest, but wanted a definitive and independent opinion on Malala's chances.

As it happened, his officers were looking after a team of British doctors at the time - a group from Birmingham who had come to Pakistan to advise the army on setting up a liver transplant programme. The multi-disciplinary team was led by emergency care consultant Javid Kayani, a British Pakistani who maintains close links with the land of his birth.

When the request for help came through, Kayani knew which one of the team he wanted to take with him to Peshawar on the helicopter that was standing by. Given Malala's age, paediatric intensive care specialist Fiona Reynolds was the obvious choice. Although she had her doubts about security in Peshawar, she had heard enough about Malala from news reports to feel the risk was worth taking. "She'd been shot because she wanted an education, and I was in Pakistan because I'm a woman with an education, so I couldn't say 'no,'" she says.

What the doctors discovered in Peshawar, though, was not encouraging. Although Malala had had what Reynolds calls "the right surgery at the right time", she was being let down by the post-operative care. A similar patient in the UK would have been having her blood pressure checked continuously via an arterial line - according to Malala's charts, hers had last been checked two hours earlier.

Reynolds' instinct told her that Malala could be saved, but everything depended on how she would be cared for.

"The quality of the intensive care was potentially compromising her final outcome, both in terms of survival and in terms of her ability to recover as much brain function as possible," she says.

That clinical opinion would be vital to Malala's future. An army intensive care specialist was sent to bolster the team in Peshawar, but when Malala deteriorated further, she was airlifted again, this time to a bigger military hospital in Islamabad.

In the first hours after her arrival there, Fiona Reynolds remained very worried. Malala's kidneys appeared to have shut down, her heart and circulation were failing, and she needed drugs to support her unstable blood pressure. "I thought she was probably going to survive, but I wasn't sure of her neurological outcome, because she'd been so sick. Any brain damage would have been made worse."

As Malala gradually stabilised, over the next couple of days, Reynolds was asked for her opinion again - this time on her rehabilitation. She asked what facilities were available, knowing that acute medicine is often far ahead of rehab. That was indeed the case in Pakistan. "I said that if the Pakistan military and the Pakistan government were serious about optimising her outcome... I said that everything that she would need would be available in Birmingham."

On 15 October 2012, Malala arrived at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, where she would remain for the next three months. She had been kept in a medically induced coma, but a day later the doctors decided to bring her out of it. Her last memory was of being on a school bus in Swat - now she was waking up surrounded by strangers, in a foreign country.

"I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was that I was in a hospital and I could see nurses and doctors," she says. "I thanked God - 'O Allah, I thank you because you have given me a new life and I am alive.'"

Malala's parents and brothers were still in Pakistan but Javid Kayani was standing at her bedside.

"When she woke up she had this very frightened look and her eyes were darting back and forth," he says.

"We knew she couldn't speak because she had a tube down her throat to assist her breathing. But I knew that she could hear so I told her who I was and I told her where she was, and she indicated by her eye movements that she understood."

Malala then gestured that she wanted to write, so a pad of paper and a pencil were brought. She attempted to write, but she had poor control of the pencil - unsurprising for someone with a head injury. Instead, an alphabet board was found and Javid Kayani watched her point to the letters one by one.

"The first word that she tapped out was 'country'. So I assumed she wanted to know where she was and I told her she was in England. And then the next word was 'father' and I told her that he was in Pakistan and he'd be coming in the next few days. That was the limit of the conversation."

More "conversations" would take place with one of the few visitors allowed in - Fiona Reynolds, who brought Malala a pink notebook in which to write down her questions.

Malala showed it to me, It is a poignant reminder of her search for answers in that period, especially the page where she simply asks, "Who did this to me?"

Malala's speech to the UN

Speech delivered to 500 young people aged 12-25 from around the world

Malala called on politicians to take urgent action to ensure every child can go to school

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also addressed the session, calling Malala "our hero"

The event, described by the UN as Malala Day, was organised by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now the UN Special Envoy for Global Education

Fanatics fear education, Malala says
For Reynolds, the fact that Malala was able to articulate her questions was a huge relief.

"I was hoping that her cognitive abilities would still be there. I was also hoping that she hadn't lost the power of speech. So the fact that she was mouthing words and writing - I thought she's not lost the ability to speak.

"And remember she was talking in her third language [Pashto is Malala's mother tongue, Urdu her second language], so her speech centre was pretty intact."

Malala would go on to make an outstanding recovery, a tribute not just to the quality of the care she received - but also, her doctors told me, to her own resilience and determination.

Once she was out of intensive care, doctors began to consider what could be done about the paralysis of the left side of her face, which had caused great distress to her parents when they were reunited with her in Birmingham. Malala's father felt she had lost her smile.

"When she used to try to smile I would look at my wife and a shadow would fall on her face, because she thought, 'This is not the same Malala I gave birth to, this is not the girl who made our lives colourful.'"

Malala's ear specialist Richard Irving thinks that in those early weeks, she was troubled by her new appearance.

"She was very reluctant initially to speak, she preferred to be photographed from the good side," he says. "I think it probably did have an emotional impact on her, which she didn't really voice to anyone, but it's very easy to understand in a 15-year-old."

After tests and scans, Irving's view was that the facial nerve was unlikely to repair itself, but without surgery, he couldn't be sure exactly what state it was in. The procedure would be a lengthy one, and this time Malala was herself able to weigh up the risks.

"She was in control," Irving says. "She would take advice from her father but she was making the decisions. She took a great interest in her medical care and didn't leave it to someone else."

During a 10-hour operation last November, he discovered that Malala's facial nerve had been entirely severed by the bullet and that a 2cm section of it was missing. For any movement to return to her face, the two ends of the nerve would have to be re-attached, but the missing section made it impossible to do this along the original route. Instead, Irving decided to expose the nerve and re-route it so it travelled a shorter distance.

In February this year, a further operation replaced the skull section removed by the surgeons in Pakistan, with a titanium plate. A cochlear implant was also inserted into Malala's left ear to correct damage to her hearing caused by the bullet. No further surgery is said to be required - her face should continue to improve over time, with the help of physiotherapy.

On 12 July, nine months after the shooting, came a major milestone - Malala stood up at the UN headquarters in New York and addressed a specially convened youth assembly. It was her 16th birthday and her speech was broadcast around the world.

"One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world," she said.

How did it feel to speak in public once again - this time on a bigger stage than she could ever have imagined?

"When I looked at 400 youth and people from more than 100 countries... I said that I am not only talking to the people of America and the other countries, I am talking to every person in the world," she says.

Ziauddin Yousafzai remembers it as the biggest day of his life. For him, Malala's speech was an assault on negative perceptions of Pashtuns, of Pakistanis and of Muslims.
Watch Mishal Husain's Panorama special You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook Malala: Shot for Going to School on Monday 7 October at 20:30 BST on BBC One
"She was holding the lamp of hope and telling the world - we are not terrorists, we are peaceful, we love education."

Malala was introduced to the audience in New York that day by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the UN's special envoy on global education.

He has no doubt about her power to focus attention on the bigger picture of nearly 60 million out-of-school children around the world. "Because of Malala," he says, "there is a public understanding that something is wrong and has got to be done."

There is even speculation she could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The girl from Swat has gone global, but she still believes she can and will return home to Pakistan. Few would advise her to do that anytime soon. There are still fears for her security and also criticism that she attracts too much attention, especially in the West.

But she seems sanguine about any criticism. "It's their right to express their feelings, and it's my right to say what I want," she says. "I want to do something for education, that's my only desire."

The danger for Malala is that the more time she spends away from Pakistan, the less she will be seen at home as a true Pakistani, and the more she will be identified with the West. But she has little time for distinctions between East and West.

"Education is education," she says. "If I am learning to be a doctor would there be an eastern stethoscope or a western stethoscope, would there be an eastern thermometer or a western thermometer?"

Still only 16, she has to balance being the world's most high-profile educational campaigner, in demand around the world, with the completion of her own schooling.

"I am still the old Malala. I still try to live normally but yes, my life has changed a lot," she tells me.

There are moments when she misses her old anonymity, but says it's "human nature" to want what you don't have.

She is an extraordinary young woman, wise beyond her years, sensible, sensitive and focused. She has experienced the worst of humanity, and the best of humanity - both from the medics who cared for her and the messages from many thousands of well-wishers.

I find one of those well-wishers in her own street in Swat, just outside the home that she never made it back to, on the afternoon she was shot. He is a young man called Farhanullah and he says the Taliban have blighted his life, destroying Swat's economic, social and educational fabric. Malala was "Pakistan's daughter", he says. "We should be proud that she has made such a big sacrifice for Pakistan."

I ask if he would like to send a message to Malala. Yes, he says. "She should continue her struggle. We are all with her."

The voice of the girl whom the Taliban tried to silence a year ago has been amplified beyond what anyone could have thought possible.

When I ask her what she thinks the militants achieved that day, she smiles.

"I think they may be regretting that they shot Malala," she says. "Now she is heard in every corner of the world."

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The girl who was shot for going to school

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One year ago schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen - her "crime", to have spoken up for the right of girls to be educated. The world reacted in horror, but after weeks in intensive care Malala survived. Her full story can now be told.

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Article - Aaron Ralston

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By the spring of 2003, Ralston still hadn't quite completed the challenge. And now the snows were starting to melt, he'd have to wait until the following winter to pick up where he left off. 'Those mountains contain some of the deadliest snowpack in the world,' Ralston says. 'And I don't say that for self-aggrandisement but just to say that's where I was at in my life when I walked into that Utah canyon back in 2003.'

On Saturday, April 26, without telling anyone his plans, Ralston packed his hiking boots, a hydration system, his backpack, climbing equipment, and, notably, a pocket-sized utility tool, put his mountain bike in the back of his truck and drove almost five hours to a remote part of Utah.

According to retired National Parks Service ranger Steve Swanke, people call the tiny town of Moab the 'end of the world'. 'Well, imagine going to the end of the world and then travelling for two and a half hours more. That takes you to the Horseshoe Canyon trailhead where Aron Ralston began his journey. It's in the middle of nowhere.'

Ralston was only planning to go day hiking and maybe do some rappelling so he could explore the slot canyons. He'd taken a gallon of water with him - plenty for such a short trip. He'd be back in Aspen by nightfall.

In Boyle's characteristically slick and fast-paced film, we see Ralston, played by James Franco, cycling through the breathtaking landscape of red sand and shadows. He meets up with two girls out hiking and takes them swimming in an idyllic, tranquil pool hidden in one of the canyons.

But it is after he leaves the girls to continue his hike that disaster strikes. Ralston had left his bike and continued on foot into Bluejohn Canyon. According to online climbing discussion forum summitpost.org, the canyon requires technical rock and canyoneering skills to negotiate. But Ralston was more than capable.

'I was accustomed to being in far, far riskier environments,' he says. 'So I thought going into that canyon was a walk in the park - there were no avalanches, it was a beautiful day and I was essentially just walking.'

But suddenly, Ralston slipped and fell down the chasm, dislodging an 800lb (360kg) chockstone boulder, which is much harder than sandstone. It crushed his arm and left Ralston pinned against the canyon wall.

He made several futile attempts to chip away at the boulder with his utility knife - but it was already fairly blunt and this just made it worse. That first night, as darkness descended on the Utah canyonlands, Ralston realised just how alone he was.

'If you want someone to show up and help you if something bad happens, you'd better tell someone where you're going. And of course I wanted someone to know - but I'd made a choice and it was a choice I was going to have to live with.'

But living through this was going to be far from easy. Ralston says the boulder was crushing his wrist so tightly that everything up to his fingertips was numb. 'It's called compartment syndrome - when the nerves and blood vessels are pinched, so that the tissue goes into necrosis and dies,' he explains.

He began stabbing the blade of his knife into the dead skin of his thumb. Hisssssss. He could hear the air escaping from the decomposing digit.

'I realised early on that I was going to have to cut my arm off to get free but there was also resistance: I didn't want to do it,' he says. 'But by the second day I was already figuring out how I could do it, so in the film you see that progression: trying to cut into the arm like a saw, finding the tourniquet, then the realisation that the knife was too dull to get through the bone. That despair was followed by a kind of peace; a realisation that I was going to die there and there was nothing I could do. It was no longer up to me. All I could do was see it through to the end.'

After five and a half days inside the canyon, out of water, delirious and hallucinating, Ralston had an epiphany. 'I felt my bone bend and I realised I could use the boulder to break it. It was like fireworks going off - I was going to get out of there.'

Ralston managed to use his body weight to violently bend his arm until the boulder snapped his forearm. He then ingeniously used the attachment from his hydration pack - a bendy rubber hose that you use to suck water out of the pack - as a makeshift tourniquet, and began sawing and cutting through the remaining cartilage, skin and tendons with his multitool.

If reading about it is making you feel queasy you may find Boyle's movie too much to stomach. Each time Ralston's character attempts to sever a nerve, Boyle uses a loud metallic sound to emphasise the excruciating pain he feels. It fills the cinema and you're forced to look away.

But Ralston says Boyle has handled it perfectly. 'Severing the nerve severed a direct line to my brain. The central nervous system is right there. It's graphic, but I think it's appropriate,' he says. 'You couldn't show any less of it and still understand what I went though. Without having to belabour it, the actual amputation lasted over an hour. So I think three minutes on film is just right. It was actually very euphoric for me and audiences have cheered and clapped.

'In the film, Franco laughs maniacally because he's broken his bone and that's how it was. I had this huge grin on my face as I picked up that knife to start this horrific thing. It was traumatic but it was a blessing to be able to get out of there.'

Ralston says the process of amputating his arm meant he endured both the extremes of pain and absolute elation, because, he says, he knew that he was closer than he ever had been during his ordeal to being free. He describes the moment when he walked out of the canyon as being reborn, 'because I'd already accepted I was going to die'. Ralston used the small point-and-shoot camera he had with him to take a picture of the rock and his severed hand 'as a kind of "screw you, I'm outta here",' he says.

He then made a makeshift sling, and incredibly managed to rappel down a 60ft cliff face to the floor of the canyon. Ironically, this would have been the one and only technical aspect of his entire trip. And Ralston managed it after amputating his arm and being deprived of sleep for five days. Covered in blood, he began marching out of the canyon. A family out hiking found him and called the emergency services.

Captain Kyle Ekker of the Emery County Sheriff's Department said Ralston's family and friends had reported him missing the previous day. Although he hadn't told them where he was going, they were convinced he had gone hiking in that county. 'We started checking the southeast corner of the county and we were just lucky that we came across his truck at the trail head of Horseshoe Canyon.'

Steve Swanke was at work early that morning when he got a call saying a hiker was missing. 'We sensed a great deal of urgency. We threw resources at it real quickly. By 3pm that afternoon we had him located, accessed, and in the helicopter, down into the hospital and stabilised. I wasn't surprised he survived - he had a strong body, a strong mind, he was in his element and he was technically savvy. He also had a very strong will to live.'

Rescuers tried to keep Ralston awake for the 12-minute flight to the hospital in Moab. When they got there he stunned them by walking into the emergency room on his own.

Since the accident, Ralston has been back to Bluejohn Canyon 10 times - with friends, news crews and with the producers of 127 Hours. They even shot some of the film there.

Understandably, the road to recovery hasn't been easy. At first, Ralston was determined to carry on challenging himself. Using a special prosthetic arm, he tried ultrarunning (ridiculously

long running races) extreme mountaineering and whitewater rafting. And he was finally able to complete the challenge he'd set himself before his accident. But, Ralston claims, he began to adopt a sense of invincibility; that if the accident in Utah hadn't killed him, nothing could. 'I realised somewhere along the way that I was just headed back to that same spot in the canyon where my life was on the line,' he says.

In 2006, Ralston lost three friends to suicide and he says it was a wake-up call; he felt he'd been given a second chance. He wanted to put more time into the non-profit work he'd started, taking disabled veterans climbing; helping troubled youngsters; preserving Colorado's national forests and wilderness areas. But he also realised it was time to settle down.

'I'd fallen in love with a woman but she broke up with me and I was devastated. Six months later, I went into a suicidal depression from the break-up of the relationship, but I resolved to not do what my friends had done. And so I reached out for help,' he says. 'Then, in the early winter of 2007, I was at a pub in Aspen watching a friend's band play and I met this woman, Jessica. She bought me a beer, we started talking and the next day we went hiking.'

They married in August, 2009 and now live in Boulder, Colorado, with their young son, Leo. Ralston says his wife played a huge role in his healing. 'And that's where I'm finally at today - my life is about being with my family,' he says. 'This is what's important.'

At the end of the film, you see the real Aron Ralston together with Jessica and Leo, sitting on a sofa, with the canyon behind them.

Ralston says it's funny, but even though he didn't know them at the time, they're the reason he was able to get out of that canyon alive. 'We have these very fundamental desires for freedom, for love and for connection. And that's what got me out.'

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127 Hours: Aron Ralston's story of survival

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By the spring of 2003, Ralston still hadn't quite completed the challenge. And now the snows were starting to melt, he'd have to wait until the following winter to pick up where he left off. 'Those mountains contain some of the deadliest snowpack in the world,' Ralston says.

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Appendix 3 - Cloze Passage - Overcoming Adversity

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Appendix 3 - Cloze Passage - Overcoming Adversity

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Appendix 5 - Overcoming Adversity - Introduction

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Appendix 5 - Overcoming Adversity - Introduction

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Motivational Video - Overcoming Adversity

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Please subscribe to my main YouTube channel... http://YouTube.com/WatchDustin360. This is a video that I was inspired to create after stumbling across this song on itunes. Check out www.dustin360.com or look me up on Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. I hope to create additional videos as ispiration strikes.

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Advertisement 2012 Para Olympics

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Pick and Mix Tasks

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Chapter Summaries

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Here are chapters 1-6, Part 1 of the book. Chapter One Chapter one introduces the reader to the main character, Raphael Fernandez. Raphael, a fourteen year old dumpsite boy narrates this part of the story and it entails many interesting ideas about the Behala dumpsite. Raphael and his best friend Gardo spend their days searching...

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Introduction

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Prezi - Reading Comprehension

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Reading comprehension unit for Parvana - Deborah Ellis

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Unit of Work

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Can you imagine living under repression for almost a decade simply for being a woman? Well this was the life of women in Afghanistan as a result of the Taliban's misogyny. Women have been deprived of...

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Prezi

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Themes in Parvana Suffering For Parvana and her family in the novel, suffering is a part of life. The thing is, though, that even though their circumstances are pretty awful, we see that other Afghans have it much worse. Shauzia, for instance, pretty much can't stand her family and they deny her access to learning after the schools are closed.

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Appendix 8 - Still I Rise - Maya Angelou

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Appendix 8 - Still I Rise - Maya Angelou

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Poem

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You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

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Still I Rise Poem by Maya Angelou - Poem Hunter

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You may write me down in historyWith your bitter, twisted lies,You may tread me in the very dirtBut still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wellsPumping in my living room.

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Rudimental - Waiting All Night (ft. Ella Eyre) [Official Video]

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Song Lyric

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Florence and the Machine - Dog Days are Over

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Florence and the Machine - Dog Days are Over

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Song Lyric

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Florence + The Machine - Dog Days Are Over (2010 Version) (Official Music Video)

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Analysis of Poem

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What is the meaning of the poem?
What is the tone of the poem?
Choose one simile or metaphor. Explain how your example demonstrates courage.
Discussion Question #1:
Discussion Question #2:
Discussion Question #4:
"The child's first step, // as awesome as an earthquake."

- Stanza 1, Lines 2-3
Sexton uses this simile to compare the similarity between a child's first step to an earthquake. Earthquakes are never planned. It's difficult to predict when one will occur. The same can be said about a child's first step. The child has never tried this before, so the consequences may include injuries. The child demonstrates courage this way because he or she might not succeed on the first attempt, so if the child persists until he or she is able to walk, this is courage. In the case of an earthquake, it's not the earthquake itself showing courage, but the victims caught in it. They must get through the devastation as quickly and safely as possible; this is courage.
Depending on how the poem is interpreted, the tone of the poem can vary. If the reader retains a negative or pessimistic feel to Sexton's writing, he or she would find that the tone is depressing and melancholy. However, if the reader concluded the poem with a positive note, he or she might find the Sexton's tone is admonishing or counsel-like.
Presented By Alyson Nguyen
By Anne Sexton
Monday, March 17, 2014
COURAGE
Who was Anne Sexton?
Examine the form of the poem. Where does the poet break the sentences in each stanza? Why does she format her work this way? What effect is she trying to achieve?
Discussion Question #3:
It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake (1).
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone (2).
When they called you crybaby (3)
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid (4)
and concealed it (5).

Later (6),
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets (7)
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there (8).
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing (9).
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage (10),
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later (11),
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone (12),
getting a transfusion from the fire (13),
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow (14),
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed (15).

Later (16),
when you face old age and its natural conclusion (17)
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love (18),
and you'll bargain with the calendar (19)
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door (20)
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.
Sexton breaks the sentences in each stanza after an example of courage is shown during each life event. She formats her work this way to emphasize the importance of courage and how it is present in your life. The effect Sexton is trying to achieve is there is courage is everything no matter how small or large it may be.
COURAGE
(1) Sexton expresses an event as small as a "child's first step" to be just as a momentous occasion as the occurrence of an earthquake.

(2) The personification "your heart...alone" allows Sexton to show that courage is present even when you endure your first spanking.

(3) Lines 8-12 can evoke the feeling of pity to the readers through Sexton's diction.

(4) "Acid" refers to insults by others.

(5) Lines 11 and 12 represents holding in or hiding the hurt received from the harsh words.

Significance of Stanza 1: The first stanza conveys the childhood stage of an individual's life where there are situations others can relate to.

Summary: There is courage in ordinary events in life.
Anne Sexton (Nov. 9, 1928 - Oct. 4, 1974) was an American poet born in Newton, Massachusetts. Sexton was known for her personal, confession-like writing. Sexton's poems had a basis of her suicidal tendencies, a long battle with depression and several other personal events with her personal life, such as dealings with her husband and children. Sexton was diagnosed and suffered from a severe mental illness for the majority of her life. It can be said that Sexton's suicidal death by carbon monoxide poisoning was caused by her constant struggle with depression and her illness (www.poemhunter.com).
(6) Later refers to a transition in time.

(7) Bombs and bullets let the reader infer that this life period is one of a soldier's.

(8) Lines 18-19 says that although you know that you are acting cowardly, you are not embracing it.

(9) However, the next two lines reveal that you are actually hiding your courage.

(10) If a fellow comrade died while saving you out in the battle field, he is not displaying courage but love.

Significance of Stanza 2: The second stanza portrays the early adulthood of a soldier. Although Stanza 1 was about actual events that happened, this stanza's uniqueness is about a possible situation that can happen.

Summary: Even soldiers display courage in simple ways. Another form for that courage is love.
(11) Another transition into another phase of life.

(12) Lines 27-28 explains someone suffering and having to go through it alone.

(13) "Transfusion from the fire" can be interpreted as the hurt you feel in your heart when you suffer. The hurt feels like a burning sensation.

(14) Lines 32-37 can be summarized as trying to relieve yourself of your sorrow by getting over it and moving on.

(15) The word "transformed" represents the sorrow leaving you.

Significance of Stanza 3: Like Stanza 2, this stanza gives the sense of a possible occurrence. The life stage in the third stanza is one of suffering, most likely in the years of a middle-aged adult..

Summary: Someone who suffers knows or has courage because he or she had to go through it and eventually recover from the suffering.
The meaning of the poem is throughout a person's lifespan, he or she will be faced with multiple situations or obstacles where courage is required in order to overcome them. However, these events do not have to be large matters. Small trivial things might be more than just "small things." It can be simple, but its impact is a challenge. Courage is needed in one's life because life itself is a constant struggle with its ups and downs.
(16) This is the finally transition. It is also the final stages of a person's life.

(17) "Natural conclusion" is Sexton's interpretation of death.

(18) Because you're afraid of dying, you tend to show great affection towards loved ones.

(19) Fighting to live another day.

(20) You are complying with the fact that it's your time to leave the face of the earth.

Significance of Stanza 4: The last stanza Sexton writes is similar to the first stanza. Death is something everyone will eventually have to go through.

Summary: Accepting the reality of death or dying takes courage.

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What is the meaning of the poem?What is the tone of the poem?Choose one simile or metaphor. Explain how your example demonstrates courage. Discussion Question #1:Discussion Question #2:Discussion Question #4:"The child's first step, // as awesome as an earthquake." - Stanza 1, Lines 2-3Sexton uses this simile to compare the similarity between a child's first step to an earthquake.

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Poem

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It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
comver your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you'll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you'll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you'll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.

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Courage Poem by Anne Sexton - Poem Hunter

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It is in the small things we see it.The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake.The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk.The first spanking when your heartwent on a journey all alone.When they called you crybabyor poor or fatty or crazyand made you into an alien, you drank their acidand concealed it.

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Magazine Article

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In May 2003, American mountain climber Aron Lee Ralston was forced to amputate his lower right arm with a dull knife in order to free himself after a boulder trapped his arm. He lived to tell the tale to GQ Sport.
My plan was to climb all of Colorado's peaks that were over 14,000 feet high. On the canyoneering trip in Blue John Canyon in Utah, a boulder fell and pinned my right forearm, crushing it. It was the third day of the planned 5-day trip. It was four days later that my mother sent a helicopter to rescue me, the same day that I cut my arm off.

I was trapped there for six days and during that time didn't get a wink of sleep. I was going through very extreme transformations.

I was in an altered state of consciousness from sleep deprivation, blood loss and lack of oxygen to my brain, dehydration, hypothermia and starvation. The days that I spent there were pure hell. The first pain was the pain of being trapped by the rock, my hand was numb but my wrist was crushed so badly it went from three inches thick to half an inch. It felt like when you slam your finger in a car door but sustained over six days, throbbing agony with every heartbeat.

The actual cutting was a different kind of pain. There are nerve endings in certain parts of your arm tissue. So when I broke the bone it hurt of course, but for me it was a happy moment because that was what was trapping me. It was the first time I realised I would soon be free. I broke the top then the bottom by bending my arm in the configurations I knew would snap it. That moment was the key to it all. If you can put yourself through all that and you're smiling a big beaming, pearly grin, you know you're winning. That stayed with me for the next hour. I was cutting through the skin, hacking through the muscle, breaking the tendon in my arm. I would feel the pain then I would smile because that pain meant impending freedom.

When I hit the main nerve - which is big like a piece of extra thick spaghetti - I had to snap it like I was plucking a guitar string with an upturned knife. And when I did that it felt like I had just vapourised my arm up to my shoulder. I took a real sharp intake of breath, closed my eyes and just felt the most intense fire burning through my arm. But at the end of that thirty seconds I was smiling again. I hadn't blacked out, I hadn't lost consciousness, I hadn't shed a tear, I hadn't even said 'Ouch'.

The best moment was when I get that last piece of flesh cut and I stepped back. It was a real feeling of happiness at all the possibilities available in life. So all that pain was over, and I just headed back to my life. I am so thankful to my mother for spearheading the rescue operation when she did. The synchronicity of that timing to get a helicopter into that canyon couldn't have been more perfect. I would have died from blood loss otherwise. I was walking for four and a half hours before I saw the helicopter.

According to the physicians who treated me, by the time I arrived at the hospital I had less than an hour to live.

Something I try to share with people is my sense of perspective.

When I was trapped there, suffering all these tremendous deprivations, I realised that I really wanted to live. I had the opportunity to kill myself, just put myself out of my misery but I chose life. Trauma, when it happens, can be a blessing or a tragedy. It can be a good thing or the excuse we've been looking for our whole lives to just check out and not try. I made a decision that this would be my rebirth, my opportunity to get my life back. It was a gift, and given the choice to erase what happened, I would still go back there and have things happen exactly as they did.

I get a chance to share this joy with people. The thing that it really comes down to for me is that I've been able to improve my life and other peoples' lives. The (always unpaid) public speaking I do allows me to convey the gift that I've been given and help people understand their own lives. Don't just seize the day, but truly appreciate it.

The main reaction I get from people is that they are baffled that I continue to adventure. I started to climb again just two months after the amputation. It was four years before I was climbing at the same level that I was before the accident but I'm finally there now.
As told to James Mullinger. Postscript: After Ralston was rescued, his arm was retrieved by park authorities and removed from under the boulder. It was cremated and given to Ralston. He returned to the boulder and left the ashes there. Danny Boyle's biographical film 127 Hours, starring James Franco as Ralston, is out 5 January.

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In May 2003, American mountain climber Aron Lee Ralston was forced to amputate his lower right arm with a dull knife in order to free himself after a boulder trapped his arm. He lived to tell the tale to GQ Sport. My plan was to climb all of Colorado's peaks that were over 14,000 feet high.

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National Geographic Article

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I think the number one thing is that he kept his head. Ralston is experienced in the backcountry, and that experience builds confidence. In an emergency situation, confidence builds a stable mental frame of mind. And that's really important. There's probably a lot of people walking around thinking they can deal with those types of situations, but I've seen people end their lives out there because they completely lost their mental stability.

What could Ralston have done to avoid this?

He could have left a note. He could have had a buddy. To me, one of the biggest problems out there is people don't tell someone that they're going to a particular location. It's really not that difficult to do, and to me, it doesn't take away from the wilderness experience.

Once Ralston made it to the hospital, his story was broadcast from England to Brazil. What do you think those reports left out?

What bothered me was the way the media made him out to be quite a hero. But they never talked about how the guy got himself into trouble because he really made some poor decisions. What's kind of irritating is that rescuers have to go out and deal with those types of situations—a lot—and most of the time they're preventable. When one person, in this case Aron Ralston, gets himself into trouble, a bunch of SAR volunteers' lives may be placed in jeopardy in order to help him.

Can you explain that point?

Even when you have trained experts that are conducting rescue activities, the environment that you're working in—whether it be the top of Mount Everest or the North Pole or out here in the middle of the desert, out in the middle of canyon country—is a dangerous environment. No training or equipment can completely remove the danger from the wilderness. If a SAR volunteer is conducting a nighttime rescue, walking along canyon rims with no moon, he can step through a slot just as easily as anyone else. That's something that the public doesn't seem to give much thought to. Because one guy (Aron Ralston) got himself into a particular situation, 15 or 16 SAR volunteers will be placed in a similar, potentially deadly, scenario.

What basic tips would you suggest to help people avoid a situation like this?

You need enough information about what you're getting ready to do, so you're prepared, so you really have an understanding. Having enough water is number one. Being able to start a fire is number two. The proper clothing is important. A cell phone can be a big help. As long as you're not down in the bottom of a canyon, you've got excellent coverage. Also, having your ego in check, realizing that you may be getting in over your head, is essential. In an age of extreme sports, people are getting themselves into more difficult situations all the time. People come into the area, and in a lot of cases they have a kind of superman mentality—they are trying to push the envelope. You must understand your limitations. If you climb down into a canyon slot, have you already figured out how you're going to get out?

What can you do if you encounter a backcountry emergency?

It's a matter of keeping your head and using your resources. That's what's so significant about Aron. He had water, a knife, and the skills that allowed him to pull off what he did—in addition to having the guts to cut his arm off. Survival still goes back to some pretty basic skills and some basic thoughts in terms of how to react. Even in this day and age, it isn't really any more sophisticated than that.

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did climber have to cut off arm to save life?

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Did Climber Have to Cut Off Arm to Save Life?

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After spending five days with his arm pinned beneath a 800-pound (360-kilogram) boulder, backcountry canyon explorer Aron Ralston cut off his hand with a pocketknife and hiked to safety. Had Ralston followed basic rules of backcountry safety, the tragedy might have been avoided.

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Journey - Don't Stop Believin' (Escape Tour 1981: Live In Houston)

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Song Lyric

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David Guetta - Titanium ft. Sia (Official Video)

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The Script - Hall of Fame (Official Video) ft. will.i.am

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The All-American Rejects - Move Along (Official Music Video)

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Song Lyric

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Survivor - Eye Of The Tiger (Official HD Video)

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Shane Koyczan