The Wreck

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Imagine feeling most of the bones in your torso breaking with a dry, ragged, SNAP while the sinew connecting them is torn apart with a terrible POP! Imagine the pain while bleeding internally for hours, lying in a twisted metal coffin. You have to assume that help will not arrive in time to save your life. Now imagine, what would you do?

I was excited when, in the middle of Fall, which is also fishing season, my cousin Jerad asked me if I would like to go fishing with him and his brother Justin. I quickly replied that I would, and when Jerad came to pick me up the three of us piled into his little Dodge pick-up and headed for Cow Camp.

Cow Camp is where our Grandpa grew up. His dad homesteaded about forty acres on the North Slope of Black Mesa to ranch. He built a cabin and let his cows out on the pasture. Every Fall grandpa and his dad joined the other cowboys to round up the cows and then to sort them by brand. Some of the other cowboys stayed at the cabin and over time it came to be called "Cow Camp". Now, though, it has become "Hunting Camp", "Fishing Camp", and sometimes, when Mick, Jerad's dad, lets his cows pasture there, it is called "Cow Camp" once again. We were headed there to "Fishing Camp" and our imaginations were working overtime bringing to mind images of the huge Brown trout that come up from the rivers to spawn.

We were all jabbering hysterically and betting who would catch the most fish as we pulled off of the black top onto the Crystal Creek Access Road. Our parents had warned us about small trucks, gravel roads, and how dangerous the roads could be. We assumed this was their worried parent side though, and hardly gave the warning heed. We didn't know how wrong we were about to become.

The road had...

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...t once. "Did you...I thought...how the?....are we?....you both...did you see...everybody okay?"

We all got out and checked over the truck then walked back and looked at our tracks to convince our unbelieving minds that we had not imagined what had happened and that we were alive. Then we all started trying to piece together what had happened, when and who had done what, and why. We each ended up with a slightly different story, but the fact remained that we had just brushed the face of death. We skimmed the surface and returned alive and hopefully wiser for the experience.

I imagined what could have happened, glad that no injury occurred. However, I can still almost feel a pop in my leg or vertebrae compressing every time my vivid imagination takes off at a memory of the incident. I will definitely never ride with someone who drives very fast on gravel again.

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