Jogging a Mad River Memory

In speaking with a friend of mine today who needed to verify some driving directions, a place name was mentioned that jogged a memory that has both haunted and affirmed me for over a decade. The place name . . . Codorus Furnace . . . the memory . . . a white water canoe accident on Palm Sunday just over 12 years ago.

Our canoe breeched on a rock in Class 4 rapids and my buddy and I were both thrown from the craft. He was lucky . . . surfaced almost immediately and was carried down stream by the current a few hundred feet. I wasn't as lucky . . . my head hit a large boulder and I was pulled under the swirling water pool near the boulder. I didn't know it at the time, but I was trapped in a "roller" . . . roughly described as being in large commerical front loading washing machine, the kind you'd see at a laundry mat. Every time my head would get near the surface, I'd be rolled under by the trubulance . . . gets real scary after 3 or 4 times . . . especially in 36 degree water and knowing that you have maybe enough oxygen in your lungs for one or 2 more rolls . . .

To this day, I swear by every religious fiber in my being, a heavenly force intervened . . . on what I am sure would have been my final trip to the surface, I could see a log hanging over the boulder . . . it stood out perfectly as the sun was directly in the sky above it . . . one opportunity to grasp upward for the branch . . . which I was somehow managed to do . . . air . . . finally some air . . . a guardian angel must have put it there . . . I swear it wasn't there when we breeched that rock.

The rest is pretty blurry . . . my buddies had made their way back upstream. I know I was in shock for quite some time and to this day am pretty lucky that they were able to build a small fire to prevent hypothermia for the 2 of us who ended up in the water.

This little creek . . . after several weeks of Spring rains had achieved Class 3 and Class 4 rapids the day of our canoe trip. There were 3 crafts in the water that day . . . 2 Mad River canoes and an Olde Town canoe. Yes . . . I continued several years of white water and flat water canoe trips . . . but remain haunted by the memory of that day in April.

They say that there are some moments in life that define who you are and who you become . . . there's no doubt in my mind that this accident set me on a whole different course. I made a number of personal resolutions . . . most too private to share in this venue . . . but I think the experienced help make me a far better person now than I was before it happened. Maybe we appreciate life so much more after we come real close to losing it, or maybe a higher power had another plan for me . . . in any event, I've learned not to waste any of the precious minutes I've been granted since then.