My Fall.

Three weeks ago today, I had the scariest experience of my life.
I've been trying to think of how I would write about it and explain it.
Luckily, my brother was by my side at the time of this near-death experience and he took care of writing the details on his blog.

"The next day, Christine and I decided to go on a little hike across the canyon from our houseboat:

(This picture isn't working for me. Eric added the captions. The watermark (white on the rocks) marks 60 feet)

So we took the kayaks over there, and parked them at the bottom (1).  We left our life jackets there, and started climbing up the rocky slope.  Every step we took sent small rocks down, so we tried to make sure not to send rocks down on top of each other.  We got to a point where there were huge boulders (2), and we had to rock climb around them to get up higher.  I went one way, and Christine decided to go another way, about 10 ft away from me, (to the right in the photo).  We were just talking, and both of us were thinking how cool we were as siblings to go hiking up this hill with our chacos on and everything, when I suddenly hear Christine yelling.  I turn around to see her falling backwards off of the rocks above a 10-foot drop, and about 60 feet total below her to the water.  I watched in horror as she fell and rolled and fell again down the hill.  All I could do was yell her name trying to show my immense concern and worry and love for her, because I thought she was going to die.  When she finally stopped falling (about 10 feet above the water) (3), she sat there, turned and looked up at me holding her head.  I was worried she had split her head open, and was going to go unconscious soon.  I heard her yell across the water to the houseboat "Dad!  Get in the ski boat and hurry over here!"  That comforted me a little in knowing she could think and yell.  I slowly started moving to the side and then down as they came over in the boat and took her back to the houseboat.  As I walked down carefully, I noticed that one of the kayaks was upside-down in the water about 10 feet from the shore (4).  At the bottom, my dad and I talked a little about what had happened.  He said that he could only see me up at the boulders and the rocks falling down from me.  The huge boulder Christine had been on was falling straight toward the kayaks, and he thought Christine was in or near the kayaks!  One miracle is that the boulder didn't follow the same path as Christine, who went left (black line) and the rocks went right (green line).  Apparently that boulder had hit the one and flipped it over into the water, smashing the one end.  When we got back to the houseboat, I went to change into dry clothes, and again, being alone, cried because of the emotions I had felt as I watched what I thought were my sister's last moments.  Then, my dad and I gave her a blessing as my mom, aunt and sister Chelsey took care of Christine's cuts.  She was in shock and was shaking.  Miraculously, she didn't break any bones, didn't split her head open or anything.  She had some pretty big scrapes, but no deep cuts, and a twisted ankle to top it off."



I honestly tried not to complain to much- because like Eric said on his blog about his injury- I didn't want to ruin the family vacation. 


The scabs are mostly gone, besides the nasty one on my head and a few on my legs. My ankle, hips and wrist are still bothering me. But what has stuck with me most is my appreciation of life. Paul wasn't there when I fell. He was on his way to Portland, and calling him with the news that I had had an accident was hard.


That night, it was so hard to sleep. I just kept reliving the incident. Feeling the boulders beneath my feet collapse. Then falling, and thinking there was no way I could live through it. 


I was so grateful for my family who helped me with the things I couldn't do. And kept me company even when I couldn't ski and swim.


Here are some pics of the injuries. I'll post some more cheerful pics of Lake Powell later. :)

Before my legs scabbed up, they didn't look too bad.

My "black eye" that didn't get too bad. It just looked like green eyeshadow.