Street Smarts Help Outdoors

Shortly after this photo I narrowly escaped death from a falling elm tree.

It was mid-April when it first happened. My father was paddling stern and I was in the bow as we canoed the Rifle River down through the shallow Pipeline Stretch.

The river was in flood stage, and we really had no business being on the water. I’d paddled a canoe a good bit and knew what had to be done. Dad, a good long-time canoe hand, was steady in the stern with a  paddle.

We had a third person, a friend of mine, and he was sitting in the middle of the canoe. We stopped for a quick break, visited with nature, had a sandwich, stretched our legs and prepared to cast off again.

A new person on the bow paddle was an unwise decision.

We were just upstream from a fallen tree with open water at the far end of the tree, and both bow man and the stern paddler would have to dig hard, move water with their paddles to cross the river upstream from the tree. My friend wanted to paddle, and I reluctantly agreed.

“This is a bad spot,” my Dad told us. “This is no place to just dip the paddle in the water. Put the paddle in up to the handle, and pull hard. Pull the canoe with each stroke. Understand me?”

My buddy nodded but he really didn’t understand. We were 10 feet from the river bank, and Dad was paddling hard. My buddy was dip-dip-dipping, and we brushed up against the upstream side of the tree. It threw Dad into the water close to the bank. My friend went into the drink near the end of the tree.

Me, sitting in the middle, was swept under the tree with the canoe. The canoe took me to the bottom, and then disappeared. I was left standing on the bottom in 10 feet of water, in a little box with logs on all four sides and above my head.

I was underwater and trapped in a log jam for nearly two minutes.

I was underwater for between one and two minutes before I clawed my way through the logs and came up between my buddy’s feet on top of the log jam. I dreamed about that experience and had nightmares about it for several years. That was the first time I cheated death.

The next time was on Bond Falls Flowage near Paulding, Michigan. We’d been fishing for some of the giant pike found there at the time, and as a side trip we went to see the Little Falls, a small waterfalls visible only during extremely low-water conditions. The electric company had drawn down the flowage to provide electricity to people in the western Upper Peninsula, and we grounded the boat near the falls.

I was in the bow with a rope and jumped off, and landed in quicksand. Down I went to my knees, and by the time I could comprehend what was happening, I was up to my belly. I remembered that it’s possible to swim out of quicksand but one has to lay down flat on it and start swimming with your arms.

It was working but my two friends were tinkering with the motor. I asked them to grab an oar or stout branch, watch their footing and kindly pull me out. That was a close call, and I suffered a severe rash over 95 percent of my body from the quicksand.

That was close call No. 2. A few years later while hunting European Hares and cottontails in southwestern Ontario, the hounds had taken a long-legged hare out of hearing on a windy day. I stood, leaning against a dead elm tree, and suddenly I felt as if someone was pulling me and whispering in my ear: “Move quickly away from that tree.”

I moved fast and 10 seconds later the entire top of that elm tree fell  right where I’d been standing. Coincidence? I don’t think so. That was my third encounter with possible death.

No one knows when an accident may happen but be aware of surroundings..

Sometime after that I fell off a third-story fire escape in northern Ontario while shooting photos of a sunrise over James Bay. Somehow, again without  conscious thought, I managed to grab the fire escape support. The fall stretched my spine, and I slammed sideways into a brick wall 40 feet above a paved parking lot. I managed to hang on even though it broke my back, ruptured a disc and hurt me bad.

I hung on to the support with both hands, shook my head to clear the cobwebs, and climbed hand-over-hand 10 feet back up to the platform and pulled myself to safety. I later had back  surgery and eventually missed 1 ½  years of work during a painful recovery.

Ah, then there was a dog attack by three vicious mutts, surviving that big storm on Lake Michigan in 1968 while riding out 10-15-foot waves in a 12-foot car-top boat and a small outboard motor. Another time I was shot in the hand and wrist by a rabbit hunter in our group. All could have been deadly but were not.

I had learned at a very early age to movefast wgen my instincts tell me to, and don’t waste time trying to analyze the reasons why.

These survival instincts are more honed in some people than others, and I have always trusted my gut feelings. I lived  one year in Chicago while going to college, and saw three people get killed. A group of thugs jumped me and two classmates, and I was the only one to get hit. Again, I ducked when it was necessary and received only a glancing blow from a huge right hand to the head. They then killed an elderly man 30 seconds after I managed to get away.

Some might consider these stories to be figments of a very active imagination but they are not. All are true, and I survived each one because I trusted myself and my instincts. Call it street smarts, instincts, gut feelings, street smarts or whatever

When bad things whisper in your ear, pay attention. Ignore them at your own peril, and the consequences can be deadly. Those who act, survive. Those who don’t, won’t.

Title: Street Smarts Help Outdoors

Tags: ((Dave, Richey, Michigan, outdoors, always, be, I, to, possible, danger, storms, attacks,  survival, instincts))

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