Stalking silently like Indians, we wallowed in the musty smell of damp decay watching frogs at "Beaver Dam." It wasn't really a beaver dam and wasn't even a pond, but just a flat, marshy spot in a bend of the creek snaking through the floor of the ravine. At Beaver Dam our shoes always got soaked and squishy, not that it really mattered much.
We three adventurers pressed on up hill, down valley, ever onward toward wherever it is adventurers press onward to. Just across the top of another hill we came upon a sharp drop-off, the edge of a high precipice marking a great chasm of cosmic proportions to block our progress. We should have split up and gone right and left to seek an accessible place to cross, but I wouldn't go alone, and neither brother Thorn nor cousin Chaz wanted the little kid in tow. So the three of us went on together.
Rounding a wide leftward-bending curve, Chaz spotted a fallen tree. The trunk spanned the yawning gap and formed a natural bridge so long as a fellow didn't fall off into the bottomless ends of the universe to be smashed beyond any semblance of recognizable person. We looked at each other. Thorn scratched his chin and looked at the other side of the canyon where the top of the tree lay amidst a scatter of broken branches and old brown leaves and mossy rocks and black earth. Did it have sufficient stability for us to crawl across without shifting beneath our movement and plunging us into the abyss?
Looking at Thorn, Chaz gave voice to our apprehension, "Whaddaya think?"
Thor kicked at a mushroom, exploding its cap with a damp "plok." "It'll do. I don't think it's going to move.
I studied their faces silently. They didn't want my opinion. They were probably secretly hoping I would be afraid to cross and they'd be rid of me. Or, even better, that I would fall off and be gone forever.
First Chaz, then Thorn carefully shinnied across the gaping maw of that hungry, demanding beast awaiting the accidental sacrifice of some young boy, tender and fat and satisfying. Then it was my turn. The old tree was slightly bowed in an arc like the humped back of some ancient prehistoric Lock Ness Monster. I know I heard a deep, menacing, greedy chuckle from the old tree - like a challenge, as if to suggest I was to scardy-cat to dare. If it did, it was right.
Petrified with fear of falling off the log, I mounted it anyway - backwards so I could sort of cling to where I'd been safe and wouldn't have to look ahead at my Fate. But it didn't work that way; so I had to turn around. Straddling the ancient trunk of the dead tree like a cowboy astride his horse, I began to scoot out onto the bridge toward the other side where the other two waited. Inch by cautious inch, slowly I bunched myself out over that endless, slavering pit . . . until, nearly to the peak, I froze in stark terror and could only lie forward and hug that old tree for the fear of my very life.
I started crying helplessly. Gulping through my sobs, I called for Thorn and Chaz to rescue me.
Of course they couldn't help me because I blocked their way to cross back over to where they could try to reach me. They were gatting mad that they'd had to drag Tail-end-Charlie along and now I'd gotten stuck. They called me sissy and tried to urge me across . . . but to no avail. How can a person clinging to the only barrier betwen him and an awful death respond? "Come on, you can make it. Just don't look down. Hurry up you little baby!" It was too late: I had already looked down long before I'd ever climbed out on the old log, and I couldn't stop looking down now. I wasn't about to let go ot that tree for anything in the world.
They abandoned me. They just walked off further into the unforgiving forest and left me to die of crying. (Boy would they be sorry.) They would probably never even find my body. Animals would eat my rotting flesh. I would simply disappear from the face of the earth; and Thorn and Chaz would just tell Mom and Dad I had wandered off and gotten separated from them and gotten lost even though they had tried to keep tabs on me. They would probaboly be heroes for searching for me or something . . . but they were murderers: God would know - they killed me. They would have to live with that for the rest of their lives. Maybe I would haunt them.
I must have lain there for several hours (actually I think it was probably about ten minutes) suffering intensely and praying to God - who failed to reach out and pluck me to safety.
Suddenly a twig snapped and I heard rustling in the leaves. Surely now I was a goner: some hungry animal had smelled human blood and approached to satisfy his lusty gut. I bit hard into the tree to keep from crying out and revealing where I was and so end the hunter's fevered search. I didn't even mind the taste of old wood or the sharp stab of splinters in my mouth. I pressed my face into the log and squeezed my eyelids tightly shut. I would not - could not - look into the savage red eyes and greedy teeth of frenzied Destiny.
But then I heard Dad's voice. He was complaining, and Thorn was pleading that they didn't want to bring me along anyway. Their voices were approaching from behind me. Thorn and Chaz had fetched Dad to come and get me down.
Dad stood beneath the arch, reached up, and lifted me off as I released my iron grasp and let his strength carry me to safety.
I just clung tightly to him. And breathed again.