Fishing My Accident

To this day I cannot explain why I am alive. i should die During my summer vacation, my mom and I went to visit my grandma and uncle. I was about 11 years old. They lived in a very rural area. The valley where they lived was very narrow running from north to south. It took maybe 20 minutes to walk from one side to the other and both sides of the valley were covered with heavy forest. The eastern side of the hill is very green and wet and the eastern side is a bit drier.

A creek snakes along the length of the valley. It was fed by melting snow and ice from nearby high mountains. In the spring the creek became a huge stream of water, several times its summertime width. Valley bottoms where there was fertile farmland often flooded. Grandma's farm often flooded in the spring, if the weather suddenly warmed up. This will cause the ice to melt faster, flooding the creek, turning it into a giant monstrous stream of ever-spreading water.

By summertime the creek had settled down to a fraction of its springtime size. There was the size of a highway lane, the main current area, connected by side ponds filled with river currents. These side ponds were dug by spring flood waters. Much of the riverbank was damaged by the force of the same water, which swept away the side bridges.

It was a summer day. My mother and I went fishing on the creek. We trekked across a field, then through some brush, to access the creek. I was carrying a fishing rod and a can of worms to use as fishing bait. There was a rough path along the edge of the creek, where a fishing pond glistened. We approached the bank's edge and saw that the floodwaters had eroded the bank a bit and weakened its stability. I was warned to be careful not to get too close to the edge as it could be unstable.

What I remember next is like a series of snapshots or flashes. I remember the bank below me suddenly collapsing. I felt that creeping creepy feeling. A craze for the Gulf Coast had seized. I remember trying to grab roots sticking out of the creek's edge. All these flashes are happening in the blink of an eye. And then click. i was sleeping I was dreaming. You get that warm sleepy feeling when you are in the most comfortable bed and only half awake. I was suddenly surrounded by a pastel pale green mist. Not aware of anything else. Just floating, dreaming and relaxing, in my own little green nirvana.

The next thing I remember is my mother dragging me to the bank by the hand. I was all wet, cold and muddy. I have no real memory of what was going on in the real world, outside of me, while I was in the fishing pond.

From what my mother told me, I understood that she could not reach me. She herself did not know how to swim. All she could do was kick me or tread water. She asked me to raise my hand so that she could pull me to the edge of the creek. I don't remember any of it. It's all empty.

I remember taking a nice hot shower afterwards to warm up. The water in the tub was very good. Nothing deep is for me.

That incident taught me a healthy respect for warnings about riverbanks, including cave-ins. Since then I have gone boat fishing, but never again in the bay.