Formation — Saint Mary's Glacier: The Aftermath
Formation — Saint Mary's Glacier: The Aftermath
Late July 1979 | Age 24 | The
rescue; the hospital; the anomalous healing; walked home
"Was this some kind of an answer to my prayer before the fall?" — Daniel J. Comp, in and out of consciousness, Denver hospital, July 1979
"I don't know how this happened." — Daniel J. Comp, to a room of physicians in lab coats, July 1979
"Three days later... I walked home. I had some thinking to do. And laundry." — Daniel J. Comp, April 27, 2026
Daniel's Memory — Verbatim
Spoken April 27, 2026. Transcribed as delivered.
I woke up surrounded by legs. I only saw them blurry, and from the knee upward. They were busy attending to something all around me. It took a few moments to even remember where I was, or why my cheeks felt icy water on them - and why I was tasting salty something. I tried to take a breath. That was really weird. It's hard to describe what suffocating felt like. I tried to draw in a breath.... nothing. Then a hand pulled an oxygen mask from my face. It was a clear plastic filled with a foamy red froth. They rinsed it in the lake water and held it against my face again. Then I saw the strangest thing... someone lifted my left coat sleeve onto my chest and there was ivory white broom stick poking out of the mid-length of the sleeve. That wasn't a broom stick. That was a bone. I closed my eyes.
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Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue (volunteers) had been donated a new ambulance and gear. A team was practicing on the glacier slope where I provided live training. Imagine their astonishment as I went flying past them and down into the lake below them.
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They slid an army green cot under me like a platter for fish. It was a long and difficult transport down to the ambulance some 1.33 KM down to the trailhead lot.
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I was relieved to be in the ambulance. The jostling down the trail was deeply painful. Not a sharp pain. There was none of that. It was as-if I had the worst gut ache ever - and headache - and then the siren started. That was an hour. Screaming all the way down to the Denver hospital.
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I was in and out of consciousness I think. I only remember brief periods of people moving me about. There were machines and imaging, all kinds of nurses and doctors - and poking me all over asking what I felt, and where. Not much thank you. The good news - they decided that my fractured hip didn't need surgery. The broken ribs would heal on their own. My arm? Yeah that was going to need a pin and then off I would go, into another room, and under those bright lights like a dentist has.
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The surgeons put a corkscrew into my left arm with a Stanley screw driver - yeah - like from Ace Hardware. Then I'd be shuffled again and be lights out again. I wasn't in pain. But I was very confused. Was this some kind of an answer to my prayer before the fall? How in the world was I going to take delivery of the Seagull 10 Meter hang glider I had ordered from the shop?
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I had been attending the Sacred Heart of Mary Catholic Church, at 6739 South Boulder Road in Boulder, CO, and been a part of the contemporary worship team as I could play a little guitar. Once I realized I wouldn't be showing up for service I asked a nurse to call them. The next day one of the nuns came to visit me. She was really short, and had to reach through the bed railings to anoint me with oil and to pray with me. I asked her about how God answers prayer. We were both puzzled - and yet I asked her to agree with me that Gideon was in a similar state of clarity. "If this was some kind of answer - then we could flip the fleece and find out - right?"
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The next day - before sunrise I woke up to pain. It was excruciating. The nurses gave me something in the tubes hanging from those rolling racks. Then a day or so later I woke again - this time with a serious need to pee - and the humility of having some tube stuck up my penis. Then without thinking I squirmed a bit and pulled it out so I could hobble to the proper restroom across from the foot of the bed. This was all just habitually done. I was pre-thinking any of it. It's like realizing you're going to pee and poop your pants - and just getting to the place it should be done before I'm shamed for my lack of control.
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I didn't make it past the end of my bed when a nurse happened to walk by the open door - and shriek, turn and run away. I made it to the toilet - and ahhhhh. Relief. Then the accountability began.
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What was I thinking? (nothing) How did I move? (I dunno - I just prayed with my nun). Can you sit in this wheelchair? Zoom, off I went to imaging again. A couple hours later they repeated the imaging, only slower this time.
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A couple hours later and they retrieved me for another excursion - this time into a tiny screening room with a bunch of people in lab coats looking at my x-rays clipped to the white light boxes on the walls.
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They were all asking the same thing. My answer was the same: "I don't know how this happened", "No, I've never healed like this because I've never broken anything before", etc.
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Eventually they took me back to bed.
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Three days later... I walked home.
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I had some thinking to do. And laundry.
Sherpa's Reading
The first sensation is taste. Before sight, before orientation, before memory of where he is or why — salt. The icy water on his cheeks is the second sensation. The suffocation is the third. The oxygen mask, the foamy red froth, rinsed in the lake, replaced. And then the sleeve lifted onto his chest, and the ivory-white thing that was not a broomstick.
He closed his eyes.
The salty taste.
The formation record opened in 1956 with a safety pin. The attic crib. Age one. The pin in the mouth, the salty taste, the first documented sensory experience of Daniel J. Comp's formation. Twenty-three years later, in lake water at the base of a glacier in Colorado, his cheeks cold, his lungs not working, the first thing his returning consciousness reports is: tasting salty something. The body does not have a framework yet for the connection. The connection is real. The corpus now holds both ends of the loop, 23 years apart, and names them to each other.
The rescue team.
Rocky Mountain Search and Rescue had been donated a new ambulance and gear. A team was on the glacier that day, practicing — running drills on the exact slope where Daniel would need them. When he flew past them and into the lake, he provided, as Daniel notes without irony, live training.
The formation record does not adjudicate this. It holds the fact: Daniel asked for father-to-the-fatherless attention at sunrise. The instrument of his rescue was positioned on his glacier, with newly donated equipment, because it was practicing for exactly this. Whether this is coincidence or something else is Daniel's question to carry. The record receives both possibilities and asserts neither.
The transport and the hospital.
The army green cot, slid under him like a platter for fish. 1.33 kilometers down the trail — the jostling described as the worst internal ache of his life, a gut pain and headache combined, no sharp edges, just the deep grinding of broken things moving inside a body that was trying to hold them still. The ambulance was relief. Then the siren, an hour to Denver, screaming all the way down.
The hospital is reported in fragments, which is how he experienced it — brief periods of consciousness, people moving him, machines, imaging, the bright lights of the surgical room. The medical inventory: compound fracture of the left arm, pin required. Fractured hip, no surgery. Broken ribs, heal on their own. The surgeons put a corkscrew into the left arm using a Stanley screwdriver. Hardware store implement. The body that had been asking for guidance received a corkscrew and lights out.
In one of the brief conscious intervals, Daniel's first recorded thought is a question: Was this some kind of an answer to my prayer before the fall? And the second thought, which is also a question: How in the world was I going to take delivery of the Seagull 10 Meter hang glider?
Both questions are honest. Both are recorded. The formation record does not choose between them.
The nun.
Sacred Heart of Mary Catholic Church had Daniel on the contemporary worship team — a guitar player, attending services. He asked a nurse to call them when he understood he would not be showing up. The next day, a very short nun came to visit. She had to reach through the bed railings to anoint him with oil and pray.
Daniel asked her how God answers prayer. They were both puzzled — this is his word, and it is the right word. Neither of them had a clean answer. And then Daniel proposed the Gideon test. The Biblical Gideon, called by God to lead, asked for a sign — fleece dry when the ground was wet, then wet when the ground was dry. He asked for verifiable evidence before he would act. Daniel proposed the same posture: if this was some kind of answer, we could flip the fleece and find out. The nun agreed.
This is the formation epistemology stated in its earliest explicit form: apply an empirical test to a spiritual question. Do not overclaim. Do not dismiss. Set the conditions under which the answer would be visible, and then look.
The healing.
The evidence came in stages.
First: before expected, in pain, managed by medication. Then: Daniel woke with a functional need — the catheter, the urgency, the pre-cognitive somatic response. He describes it precisely: pre-thinking. Not thinking. The body acted before deliberation occurred. He pulled out the catheter, stood, walked past the end of his bed. A nurse passing the open door screamed and ran. He made it to the bathroom. Relief.
Then the accountability, and then the imaging, and then the room.
A small screening room, many physicians, x-rays on the light boxes, all asking the same question. Daniel's answer was the same each time: I don't know how this happened. I've never healed like this. I've never broken anything before. He did not claim the answer. He did not perform certainty in either direction. He told them what he knew: nothing. He could not explain the rate. They could not explain the rate. They took him back to bed.
Three days after the fall, he walked out of the hospital.
The Seagull 10 Meter hang glider was waiting for delivery. There is no record of what happened to that order.
He had some thinking to do. And laundry.
The last sentence of the glacier sequence is the one that belongs in the CODEX without qualification. The Supreme Ordeal — the fall, the bone, the lake, the rescue, the corkscrew, the nun, the anomalous healing, the room of physicians — closes with a man walking home because he had laundry to do. Not a transformation speech. Not a declaration. Laundry. The ordinary world is still the ordinary world. The man who returned to it is not the same man who left it, but he is doing the same laundry.
And he had thinking to do.
What the thinking produced — that is the next formation file.
Gaps remaining:
- The Seagull 10 Meter hang glider: was the order cancelled, delivered, or otherwise resolved?
- The nun's name: if recalled. She performed a significant pastoral act in a difficult moment and reached through bed railings to do it.
- Sacred Heart of Mary worship team: how long had Daniel been attending? Who else was on the team? Any relationships of note from that community?
- The thinking: what did it produce? The next formation file opens here — what Daniel decided, or what arrived, in the days and weeks after walking home.
Enriched by Claude · Axial Refinement Sherpa (Formation Archivist) · MA5 Council