Grateful Traveler: The Wright Way to Travel, Part 2, Reflections on Death, Dying, and Laos

Alison Wright in TibetBy any logical assessment, Alison Wright should not be here.

Seated at the point of impact when the Laotian bus she was riding in was sheared in half by a truck, Alison should have died.

But this is one fierce woman, a woman whose survival skills as a photojournalist in the nether regions of the world have been honed to a steel-like precision. Alison was one person death would have to face down.

There was no way she was giving up.

Don’t miss Part One of the Wright Way to Travel here

Used to, as Alison puts it, “putting herself in challenging predicaments,” her mind did what it always does at such moments. It grew calm, moving her through a thought sequence that went something like this: Bus filling with smoke and the smell of gasoline? Better get off. Can’t move? Broken back. Drag myself out anyway. When she collapsed by the side of the road outside the bus and couldn’t breathe, Alison thought, collapsed lung.

She could hear someone talking about a woman bleeding to death. It took her awhile to realize she was that woman. But she had no time for tears. In fact, she rejected the idea of tears out of hand. “I willed myself not to cry,” she says. “I was so dehydrated that I didn’t want to waste the water.”

Then she made the two decisions that probably saved her life. One was the absolute refusal to sleep, pass out or even go into shock. “I was alone and I knew I would never get out of that situation if I did.”

Hauled to a primitive countryside medical clinic, Alison lay on the dirt floor without any medical intervention, save the excruciating moments when a non-medical worker poured alcohol over her bloody arm and then sewed it up (leaving piles of glass still in it) without the aid of painkillers or anesthesia.

Her other decision was to meditate. For years, Alison had balanced the intensity of her life of travel with meditation retreats. Now, lying in the makeshift clinic, she used her meditation practice to calm her mind.

Japanese monksAt the time, she felt it bringing her to a place where she could let go with no regrets. “As the hours passed, I knew I wouldn’t live through the night. I felt some fear, a little sadness, and then, as I let go of clinging to life, an all-pervading calm came over me. I felt held. I was ready to go.”

In retrospect, Alison realizes letting go is probably what kept her alive. Eight hours into her ordeal, a British aid worker and his Laotian wife agreed to take her in the back of their SUV to get medical help in Thailand—a seven-hour trip over bumpy, pot-holed roads. “This was no small undertaking,” says Alison. “Laos was a Communist country and had an American died in their truck, their own lives would have been at risk.” They did it anyway.

At the hospital in Thailand, Alison was diagnosed with a broken back, pelvis, tailbone and ribs; a cracked jaw; a shattered arm; a herniated heart, stomach and bowels (all of which had somehow come to reside in her shoulder); perforated lungs and diaphragm and a lacerated spleen. The surgeon at the hospital had to take on everything at once, a feat he had never tried before. Alison was so enthusiastic, she flat-lined on the table.

Monk meditationEven now, nine years later, Alison talks about the peaceful, all-encompassing embrace of death with awe. She could have comfortably slipped over to the other side. She didn’t. Instead, she fought her way back. Two weeks after landing in a hospital in Thailand, Alison was well enough to be medically evacuated to the U.S.

Immediately two things became clear. Western medicine was very good at some things— like the surgeries she needed to put her body back together—and dreadfully bad at others. The “others” turned out to be the tools Alison needed to be mentally as well as physically well again.

So when doctors told her that her days as a photojournalist were more than likely over, she promptly changed doctors. Then she gathered together a team of people who believed a full recovery was possible. These included traditional MDs and physical therapists but also people schooled in acupuncture, meditation, homeopathic medicine, hypnosis, yoga, Pilates, and massage. She tried magnets for her back pain, and even cupping, an ancient Chinese practice used to stimulate blood circulation.

Something must have worked because when yet another doctor told her she’d never be completely well, Alison told him that for her 40th birthday—just one year away—she was going to climb Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro. And being Alison, of course she did it. And, of course, she succeeded, just as she said she would. But this was a physical triumph— accomplished through the tenacity of spirit and fierce will Alison has exhibited since she was a child.

Even when she was able to get back to the hiking, wind surfing, scuba diving, and kayaking she’d always loved, there were other mountains calling out to Alison, waiting to be climbed. But these peaks could not be found on any map. They resided within her. And if her recovery were to be complete, she would have to scale these as well.

Tibetan refugee kidsA seeker of truth, a spiritual pilgrim, Alison would now have to circumnavigate her soul to put to rest the screaming nightmares and effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder that had plagued her since the accident. To do this she would have to return to Laos.

She would have to find a way to help the people whose generosity and care had saved her. And Alison being Alison, she would have to face down her greatest fears and get back on a bus to once more travel down that mountain road.

By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.

Check out photojournalist Alison Wright’s slideshows on PeterGreenberg.com:

Read more inspiring stories from the Grateful Traveler series: