dontravis.com blog post #585
Photo courtesy of Phys.org.
NERDS
IN THE WILD
In what must have been the middle of the
night, I woke. It had stopped raining, at least I couldn’t hear water hitting
the tent. Of course, I couldn’t hear much of anything because of a dull roaring
sound. It took a few minutes to understand it must be the creek. The shelf
where I lay must have been ten feet above the water. But maybe not. It sounded
closer – and angrier – than that peaceful little trickle of yesterday.
Then I realized my butt was wet. Wet and
cold. That’s what had awakened me. I put my hand out and dipped my fingers in
half an inch of frigid liquid.
“Ron!” I yelled. “Get up! There’s water in
the tent.” I fought my way out of the sleeping bag and stood in the water. And
my feet had been about the only part of me that wasn’t freezing. I heard Ron
splashing and cursing in around in the darkness.
“Glasses! Can’t find my glasses.” That all
came out in a moan.
Then I felt the tent move. Not much, but
just a little. Hell, it shouldn’t be moving at all. The water was now up around
my ankles.
“Get out!” I screamed. “The tent’s about
go.”
“Glasses! Gotta find my glasses!”
I found the zipper and managed to get it
halfway up. “Forget your glasses. Save your ass!”
I fought my way out of the tent into a
freezing wind. I was pretty sure it had stopped raining, but water still pelted
my face. Whipped up by the wind, probably. Ron blundered out of the tent and
almost shoved me down into the creek. The clouds had cleared and a moon
directly overhead provided a little light. I felt blood drain from my face as I
looked across the canyon at a broad expanse of boiling water. Yesterday’s
playful creek had become an angry river. And we were standing in it.
I turned and ran into Ron. “Run,” I said.
“Climb the walls. We gotta get higher.”
“G-grab our packs,” he stammered.
Even as he said it, our tent swayed before
the wind, and then it was gone. We watched with our jaws sagging as it floated
for a minute, and then collapsed from the weight of the water inside. It was
out of sight within ten seconds.
Just as I started for the wall of rock
behind me, a deep booming sound halted me. “What’s that?”
“D-dunno,” Ron stammered. “Maybe thunder.”
It came again … and again. A booming,
thudding grinding sound. Getting closer. And then I understood.
“That’s not thunder. Move. Climb for your
life!”
“What is it?”
“Climb, man, climb. Don’t waste time
talking.
I’m not sure how we did it given the
combination of total darkness eased only by the moon’s glow and rocks still
slippery from the rain, but we began to ascend the nearly vertical walls of
Grolier Canyon. All the while the terrible booming came closer and closer.
I reached a ledge and paused to grab Ron’s
collar and drag him up beside me. I had no idea if we were high enough, but I’d
done all I could. I wasn’t going to be able to climb another inch. So I started
praying while the wind tried to snatch us off our precarious perch.
The booming grew louder and louder until
it was almost ear-splitting. My chilled blood ran even colder. Ron grabbed my
arm and let out a moan as a wall of water rushed toward us, an occasional
boulder the size of a truck occasionally visible inside it.
“Oh, shit! Climb,” Ron yelled.
I grabbed his arm. “Don’t move. If we’re
not high enough, it’s too late now.”
“But—”
“We might fall if we try to climb. Stay
still.”
The ten-foot wall of muddy water seemed to
move agonizingly slowly. It was like watching death approach at a slow, deliberate
pace. But I knew there was nothing slow about it. And the booms filling our
ears weren’t death drums, they were boulders and tree trunks and who knew what
else being swept along by the power of the water. Why wasn’t I terrified? Why was I calm?
And then it reached us. The angry wall
passed right below our feet, but leaping waves reached up to snatch at us. We
were drenched anew, but we remained glued to the wall of cork at our backs. And
then I saw a tree, reduced to only a sodden log rushing for us. Someone moaned
– I think it was me – as a long, cable-like root scraped the canyon wall not
twenty feet ahead of us. We clutched one another and watched in awe as the log
tumbled, and the whipping root rose and passed just over our heads.
And then the torrent was past. The booming
receded, echoing up and down the steep canyon walls. And with the passing came
the fear. The absolute terror that had refused to come as we stared Death in
the face. I started shivering violently, but didn’t know if it was fright or
cold. Probably both. We were without boots, without coats. Thank goodness we’d
slept in our clothing. We were soaked to the skin and whipped by a brisk, cold
wind.
The water level dropped rapidly after
that, but it stubbornly refused to drop enough for us to clamber down to that
rock shelf where we’d pitched our tent. There was no way to go anywhere. We
were stranded. Would we freeze to death before cramping leg muscles pitched us
off the ledge into the torrent below?
I was still calculating the odds on that
when I heard the faint sound of a helicopter.
****
Ron and I considered skipping school the
next Monday, but that would merely delay the inevitable. Dweebs and nerds and
geeks – and we were all three – came in for more than their share of harassment
at Belvedere High, and our recent adventure brought us more than usual. But it
also brought a few “glad you made it” and “close shave, man” comments. We had
handled things pretty well until Friday’s edition of the Belvedere Weekly Gazette came out.
The lead story opened with the words
“Local Belvedere High students, Ezekiel Harmer (17) and Ronald Smylie (17) ignored
a flood warning last Saturday and were caught in a flash flood in Golier Canyon.
The two youths were rescued by…
****
Maybe I am a nerd--sans electronics--because that's exactly the way any invasion of the wilderness by me would likely turn out. Hope you enjoyed the little story. Hopefully, I'll be back on schedule so I can give you something new next week.
Until then.
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