Imagine that you are lost in the woods with friends. Not a
little city or county park, but a wilderness of thousands of acres. It’s a dark, stormy day,
so you can get no fix on direction from the position of the sun, and one of your
party has a life-threatening illness, making your situation all that
much more frightening.
Stumbling around, you come to a river, and by some apparent
miracle, there is a boat tied up onshore, large
enough to hold all of you. One of your party assures the rest that heading downstream is your best possible chance for survival. Eventually the river will come to some kind of civilization, where help will be available. Food, warmth. Rescue. Survival!
It makes
sense, you all agree. You get in the boat, push off from shore, and begin to drift with the current.
The storm continues. As rain lashes your crowded little
storm-tossed craft, the sense of urgency increases, and drifting with
the current seems too slow a pace. Everyone now puts hands in the water and
paddles furiously to speed the boat to safety downstream.
Meanwhile, the roaring wind in the trees along the river seems to increase along with your speed. The noise becomes deafening – just as your
boat tumbles over a waterfall, crashing on rocks below. Some of the party are
dashed on the rocks, others drowned. Perhaps one or two survive to tell the
tale.
You did not intend death and destruction. You intended
survival for all. If you’d had a map of the river, you could have foreseen the
waterfall.
Unfortunately, there is no map to the future. The best we
can do is to learn from the past. Or repeat its most hellish episodes.
4 comments:
Perhaps a better alternative was for them to explore the area where someone had a boat tied up? Maybe there was a cabin, or at least a road where they brought the boat in. Hindsight aside, the experts
recommend going downstream. The frightening ending reminds me of a
near death canoe accident back in the day. A friend and I decided to
canoe after dark on the Chippewa River south from Chippewa Falls to
Eau Claire. Being young and invulnerable, we paddled out into a very
flooded stream. There was no moon and we were guided by the sound of rushing water in the trees along the banks. As with your example,
we heard a roaring sound in the dark. How could we have not known
they were building a pipeline across the river? Riding the crest of
the flood there was no way to reach the river bank on either side.
At the last minute we could see the entire river drop over a bunch of metal pilings and cables. Over we went and straight into the inky depths. The turbulence caused our loss of life jackets, paddles and even my shoes and billfold. We clung to the canoe and kicked for the closer bank, but the river was fast and bordered with cliffs.
Two miles later, my friend announced he couldn't last any longer.
Then, he stepped on a rock and we dragged the craft up the bank,
tied it and scaled the cliff. Like your example, we headed through
the woods, unable to see more than a few feet in the darkness..then, in the distance a single light. We came closer and saw it was a farm yard light. The farm dogs surrounded us barking and growling; I have never been so happy to see angry dogs in my life! And so we lived to
canoe another day. Apologies-sometimes stories bring out old memories.
BB, you never need to apologize for your wonderful stories! They are always very vivid. This one reminds me of a chapter I just read last night (re-reading the book) in THE TRACKER, by Tom Browne, Jr. If you haven't read the book, I highly recommend it -- to anyone but especially to YOU!
Downstream does seem reasonable. On the other hand, the usual advice is not to wander around at all but remain in place, and you're likely to be found more quickly. (Not that Tracker Browne would ever have chosen that alternative, but he was an expert woodsman at an early age.) What my parable attempts to point out is that we are all, in more cases than we realize, making decisions under conditions of uncertainty.
David and I had a hair-raising experience on the little Paw Paw River one time. A storm blew up, and we began to hear that rushing roaring sound. It sounded like water going over a dam -- terrifying thought! -- but we had been on this stretch of river before and knew there was no dam. When we realized the sound came from wind in the tops of the trees, however, we were only momentarily relieved, because all up and down the length of the Paw Paw River were fallen trees and old logs that had once been standing upright, before storms sent them crashing. Getting off the river in the middle of trackless woods and wetland was no solution, though, so we had to keep going, David paddling and me bailing. We made it out alive, two very wet, cold, shivering river rats.
Gosh, who needs skydiving? :) Thanks, I will check on THE TRACKER.
Note inspired by Kathy W.'s question: Perhaps I should have said outright that this story is a parable.
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