Adventure

Cold, clear (low 30s)

Cut loose for the afternoon, I decided to put up the nature trail signs that fell down last spring after that unfortunate incident in which I tried to put them up with caulk. Anyhoo, I trotted down to the river with a drill (for screwing in protruding screws), Liquid Nails, and the missing signs. I decided to do the most difficult one first, and that required crossing the creek. Now, in the summer, crossing the creek is no big deal. A couple of rock-hops, or a balancing act on a log, and you’re there. But in the winter, the creek is a different story. It spills all over the rocks, and is dangerously fast. I thought today I might be able to make it from rock to rock, and so, after much deliberation, I tossed my tools across, and prepared to join them. But the current was too fast, and besides, the rocks I had intended to use as footholds were covered in ice. I walked up and down the creek, and couldn’t find anything suitable. I even climbed over boulders and found a place where I could wedge myself between two rocks and almost jump, but it was just too risky.

And so it was that I hiked all the way up the trail, and crossed at the bridge. This would all have been fine, except that there’s no trail from this bridge to where my tools were sitting on the wrong side of the creek. So I had to bush-whack to get there. Sad to say, I’ve done this route before. It’s not easy. At one point, I was crossing a steep area with very loose soil, and I looked down to notice I was about thirty feet up, directly above the creek. Not a little ledge or anything; just some incredibly loose soil and me. Yipes. My foot wasn’t very well anchored, and I reached out for a hand-hold, but all I could find were ferns. It looked like this area had been part of a landslide not so long ago, and as I was contemplating what it would be like to hit the icy, rocky creek thirty feet below, my foot started to slip.

It was an amazingly calm moment. I thought a thought I’ve seldom, if ever, thought before, which was, There is a chance I’m going to slip right now, and be either severely injured or dead, and there’s not a lot I can do about it. As my foot moved farther and farther from my body, a sudden movement started to seem appealing, but that would have been deadly. Some sort of survival instinct kicked in, and I hugged the dirt, full force, plastering my whole body to it, and that slowed my foot. I was able then to balance, and, using all fours, get out of there.

I spent a bunch of time on my hands and knees, crawling through little, unwieldy spaces, and that was terribly fun. By the time I got to the tools, I was almost a little disappointed, because that meant the end of the adventure, but on the way back, I got to do it again, this time holding the caulk gun and the drill, and that made it exciting. I stopped a couple of times to munch on icicles. It was a pretty great day. I’m glad I made it.