Nearing Death In an Icy Grave - How I Survived

It only takes a moment for a fun adventure to turn into a fight for your life. This is the tale of the first time I first stared Death in the face, and almost lost my brothers and two nephews in the process.

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The day started out like any other day, except it was cold. REALLY COLD. There was a fresh blanket of snow covering everything. It was a typical southern Indiana Winter's day, you could say.

My aunt and uncle were visiting from Arkansas that week, and after years of wanting to home with them, me and my brother were finally getting the chance at an amazing vacation filled with caves and rivers, hiking and canoeing in the Ozark Mountains of Northern Arkansas. I was extremely excited about the trip!

I had gone to my brother's house to let him know that I was leaving in a few hours, and I wanted to tell him bye before I left. He was in his garage working on a small boat engine for a friend of ours. My cousin Leon was there with him, and while we were talking about the trip he finally got the engine running.

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Once we heard the engine rev up, we just HAD to go test it out really quick. There was a slight problem with the plan; every lake in the area was frozen over, but there was the possibility that one of them hadn't frozen due to the creek channel that runs through the center of it. We threw the boat in his truck bed, along with the little engine, and by this time we had attracted the attention of my brother's children. They wanted to come watch, so we all piled into one truck, and Leon hopped in his, and off we went.

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The lake, which has the unofficial name of Dry Lake, is very secluded. You have to drive a few miles down an old gravel road to reach it. We pulled up to the lake and it didn't look promising. The entire lake was frozen over, but we pressed on, hoping to spot an opening in the ice big enough to get a boat into. We finally found a place that was fairly close to the creek channel, and as we thought, it wasn't frozen in the middle where the current flowed.

We pulled the boat out of my brother's truck bed and fastened the engine to the back, and then my little brother and I began to slowly push the boat across the ice towards the water. We kept most of our weight on the boat, because the ice wasn't really thick enough to walk on. Once the ice got too thin, we hopped in the boat and used an oar to break up the ice in order to paddle out to the open water. Once we were out there, my brother gave the engine a pull and it buzzed to life, and off we went!

We took the boat down the creek channel and around the curve, then turned around and headed back towards shore where my other brother, two nephews, and cousin waited for us. Our little boat became an ice-breaker as we pulled close to shore, and it opened up a small channel we could use on our second trip across the lake.

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Once back to shore, I jumped out, and my younger brother got in, along with both nephews. They asked my cousin if he wanted to ride, and he declined. He said he was having fun just watching us. Then my older brother told me to get back in the boat, and at first I declined as well, because I thought it looked a little overloaded, but he assured me that our weights would balance the boat out, so I reluctantly stepped back inside the boat and took a seat at the very front.

I had an uneasy feeling that we had too many people in the boat at that point, but as my brother pulled away from shore the boat seemed to be doing okay. My nephews were smiling as they told their dad to go faster, so he opened the throttle up. BIG MISTAKE! Instead of planing out, like a boat is supposed to do when you speed up, the nose began diving under the surface of the water instead.

I immediately yelled for my brother to stop, but it was too late. I felt the stabbing numbness of the frigid water envelop me as the bottom of the boat gave way to deep, open water beneath. I frantically kicked with my legs, as my coveralls and coat severely weighed me down.

I quickly noticed that the boat was upside down, but still floating, so I swam as hard as I could and grabbed hold of the side of the boat. It all happened so quickly that I hadn't had time to think of everyone else who was in the water, but as soon as I grabbed the boat I saw my older brother struggling a few feet away. I realized he couldn't swim and I grabbed his jacket as fast as I could and pulled him to the boat.

My younger brother can swim a bit, and he made it to the boat as well, but both of our nephews were nowhere to be seen! I got a brief glimpse of one of them underwater and I jumped over to grab him before he sank out of sight, and pulled him up as far as I could out of the water.

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My younger brother just barely saw our other nephew's hair through the murky water and reached out to him just as he went out of sight. I don't know how, but he managed to snatch him at the very last split second and pull him up to the boat as well, but we were far from being safe.

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The water was freezing cold. Sheets of ice were all around us in the water. All of the stabbing pain I felt quickly went away, and left me feeling warm all over. Hypothermia was starting to take hold. I knew we had to get out of the water as fast as we could, or we were going to die.

My nephews were screaming at the top of their lungs. I can still remember the redness of their faces from the freezing water. My older brother was as pale as a ghost, and my younger brother was kicking his feet, trying to get us closer to shore, but it was't working.

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Through all of this, Cousin Leon was yelling from shore, scared out of his mind because he didn't know what to do. He was literally running back and forth looking for any way to help us that he could. He didn't know how to swim either, so he couldn't come out to us, and we were way too far out for any sort of rope, but he ran back to his truck and found a long strap to try anyways.

I was clutching my older brother's jacket as he held onto the boat in the water.

He looked at me and said "I'm not gonna make it, Eric".

I tried to lighten the mood a little by laughing, and I told him we were ALL going to make it out of there, but I was frightened by what he had said. I didn't know what was going to happen.

In water that cold, a person can stay conscious for 15-20 minutes, and we had already been in the water over 10 minutes.

"We all have to kick towards shore at the same time!" I said.

We tried several times before the boat started inching towards shore. It took every ounce of energy we had. The water had drained every bit of strength that we had.

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Closer and closer to shore we got, and finally after what seemed like an hour, my brother was able to catch the strap my cousin was trying to throw from as far out in the water as he was able to stand. He pulled us in, and I was the first person out of the water.

As I grabbed his hand and tried to step up the bank, I realized for the first time how much trouble we were in. It took every ounce of strength I had in order to take a single step up the bank. I was completely numb. I couldn't feel anything, and I felt like I weighed 10x more because of it. I grabbed my nephews and pulled both of them up the bank with help from Leon, then my brothers.

Leon ran to his truck and put it in 4x4 and drove it all the way to us. The numbness I was experiencing had now turned into the hottest burning sensation I had ever felt! I was on fire from head to toe. It was excruciating! They stripped my nephews down to their underwear, and we all piled in Leon's truck and sped towards the house. I was shivering violently, I know my brothers and nephews were going through the same thing. I thought I was going to go unconscious on the way home. I was fighting to stay awake.

I know Leon broke the speed limit on the way home, but at that point it didn't matter. We sped through town, and up the hill to my brother's house. We quickly went in the house and I changed my clothes, which took a lot of painful effort to complete. I turned the cooking oven on as high as it would go, and literally climbed halfway inside it. My nephews were piled with blankets over a hot furnace vent as they screamed in pain.

My brother called our mom on the phone, and she, along with several other family members raced up to help us out. By the time they got there, the kids had stopped screaming and were warming up nicely, my brothers were doing okay as well, but I was still hovering over the oven, still shivering.

I was still too cold to think about much of anything, but I was thankful to be alive, and more than that, I was glad my brothers and nephews were okay. I was more worried about them while we were freezing to death in that water, than I was for my own safety. I may have been able to swim to shore on my own, but if I had, I would have lost some people who are very dear to me.

After a couple hours of warming ourselves up, it was time to go to Arkansas. I almost considered cancelling the trip, but I had been waiting too long for that trip. I couldn't get out of the van anywhere along the route because of the lingering psychological effects I was going through. The slightest cold breeze brought the intense shivering right back. It ruined almost a week of my trip because I couldn't go outside. It was almost as if my body temperature was still low, even 5 days past the accident.

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Once I was able to step foot out in the open air in Arkansas, the beginning of one of my biggest adventures EVER had began, but that's a story for another day. And guess what!
I'm still alive.

Actual lake from the accident. Google Earth image

I have to thank #dolphinschool and #markrmorrisjr for everything he's given me during this past week. If it wasn't for him, my posts would still be dull and under-edited. I've learned so much while attending the boot camp, and I've given it all I have! Thank you.

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