| To this day I can't explain why I am still alive. I | | | | and could see that the flood waters had eaten |
| should be dead. My mother and I were visiting | | | | away the bank a bit, weakening its stability. I |
| my grandmother and uncle, during my summer | | | | had been warned to be careful not to walk too |
| vacation. I was about 10 years old . They lived | | | | close to the edge, since it could be unstable. |
| in a very rural area. The valley where they lived | | | | What I recall next is a bit like a series of |
| was quite narrow, running north to south. It | | | | snapshots or flashes. I sort of remember the |
| might have taken 5 minutes to drive from one | | | | bank below me suddenly breaking away. I |
| side to the other and both sides of this valley, | | | | sensed that falling panicky feeling. There was a |
| were heavily forested. The western mountain | | | | mad grab for the creek bank. I recall flashes of |
| side, very green and wet and the eastern side a | | | | trying to grab roots sticking out of the creek's |
| bit drier. | | | | bank. All these flashes happening in a blink of an |
| A creek snaked its way along the length of the | | | | eye. And then click. I was sleeping. I was |
| valley. It was fed by the melting snow and ice | | | | dreaming. That warm fuzzy sleep feeling you |
| from the nearby towering mountains. In spring | | | | get, when you are in the most comfortable bed |
| time the creek became a raging torrent of | | | | and are only half awake. I was suddenly |
| water, several times its summer time width. | | | | surrounded by a pastel light green haze. No |
| Very often it would flood the bottom of the | | | | more awareness of any thing else. Just floating, |
| valley, where the fertile farm land was located. | | | | dreaming, and comfortable, in my own little green |
| Grandmother's farm was often flooded in spring | | | | nirvana. |
| time, if the weather suddenly became hot. This | | | | The next thing I remember was my mother |
| would cause rapid snow melt, feeding the creek, | | | | pulling me up the bank by the arm. I was all |
| making it turn into a huge monstrous torrent of | | | | wet, cold and muddy. I have no real memory of |
| ever expanding water. | | | | what was going on in the real world, outside me, |
| By summer time the creek settled down, to a | | | | during my time in the fishing pool. |
| fraction of its spring time size. There was a | | | | From what my mother told me, I understand that |
| highway lane size, main current area, flanked by | | | | she couldn't get to me. She didn't know how to |
| side pools fed by streamlets. These side pools | | | | swim herself. All she could do was yell to me to |
| had been dug by the spring flood waters. A lot | | | | kick or tread water. She also told me to raise |
| of the river bank was undermined by the same | | | | my arm so she could pull me up the creek bank. |
| water power, that had dredged the side pools. | | | | I don't recall any of that. It's all blank. |
| It was a hot summer day. My mother and I set | | | | I remember taking a nice hot bath later, to warm |
| out to go fishing at the creek. We trekked | | | | up. The water in the tub was just fine. Any |
| across a field, then through some brush, to gain | | | | thing deeper is not for me. |
| access to the creek. I was carrying a fishing rod | | | | That event taught me a healthy respect for |
| and a can of worms, to be used as fishing bait. | | | | warnings about river banks, which could cave |
| There was a rough trail at the edge of the creek, | | | | in. I have since gone fishing in a boat, but |
| leading towards where one of the fishing pools | | | | never by a creek again. |
| sparkled. We walked near the edge of the bank | | | | |