Friday, March 9th, 2018
Sometimes I wonder how I manage to survive. Whether it's by accident, on purpose, or a little of both, it always seems to work out in the end. That being said, all my more significant injuries could have been easily prevented by a little dose of prudence, good judgment, and just all round common sense. Perhaps running around barefoot in the dark in the desert in a large backyard you've never been in before might not be such a good idea after all. Maybe jumping off a roof onto the open back door of a suburban wasn't the best decision either. And maybe, just maybe, getting a good running start down a narrow icy path laden with rocks wasn't quite the amazing plan I thought it was. One day I'll learn from all my mistakes and not hurt myself in such remarkably preventable ways. One day, yes, maybe so, but not today. No, not today. Let's start it way back where all good stories start: the beginning.
It all began years ago when I was seven years old. I had just gotten a new pair of shoes when I... hahae, no, not that far back. Let's just go to the beginning of the day, sound good? Good. Let's go. Well, today was the day! It was the second day of being done with finals, which, to digress a little bit as I am wont to do, was quite the action-packed week. It was both short and, with the exception of furnishing the worst translation in the history of Latin translations, sweet. It even ended with a bang as I raced the clock to finish my screenwriting assignment. It was due at 11:59pm on Wednesday, and at 10pm of that night I decided it'd be a fine time to rework my entire screenplay. I worked fast and furious the entire duration of those two hours, culminating with me blasting out the last few changes as I listened to the song 'Indian Outlaw', and I even pressed the submit button as the line, "...so proud to live, so proud to die..." sang out. Gulp. It was 12:01am, a full two minutes after the deadline. I was exhausted, and fairly surprised when I looked up to see that the whole gang had gathered around my little cubicle in the UI library. None of them were in the screenwriting class, so I like to think that's why they were afforded this luxury. In reality though, most of the other had already finished and submitted their screenplays by this time anyways, and it was only by means of my procrastination that I was there typing away shortly before the deadline. Oh well, I suppose that's how it works sometimes, eh? Brooke and Anna decided to be reasonable and go to bed, but Benjamin and Caleb and I decided to celebrate and go to Taco Bell. Or at least, I was celebrating because I was done with all my finals, they still had one or two left. It was a great ending to a decent finals week.
Anyways, Friday rolled around, and with it the desire to get out of town and do something, and what better way than to go swimming? Well, we weren't going swimming exactly, our destination was more of a natural hotsprings, but doubtless there'd be water there to enjoy. Froh and I made it down to the meeting place at the appointed time, only to find we were the first there. Except Bobby was there too, still trying to put the finishing touches on an assignment that should've been turned in already but hadn't been due to sickness. I preached to him about all the reasons why he should still come with us, and by and by he was convinced; he finished it enough to submit it, dropped the rest, and came along. Everybody was glad of it too. Eventually everybody else showed up and we got on our way; Froh, John, Bobby, Joelle with Christy in her car, and Handerson, Charli, and myself with Mandy in her (borrowed) car. And we were off! All the people in our car brought a ton of snacks for the road, everything from apples, to cookies, to cheezits and chocolate-covered cranberries(?). When we had about crested the large hill outside Lewiston, Handerson and I told Mandy to take the fun way down, which involved getting off the main road and taking the scenic route called The Spiral Highway. This is a road that twists and winds all the way down the grade, and is super fun to drive on. Part way down we opened the sunroof to let in the sun and the wind, and, heh heh, an idea flew into my funnel. I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood up through the sunroof! It was sooo much fun! I turned and waved at the other car in the convoy behind us, and tried to hit them with some almonds I think it was. I was unsuccessful, but it was fun nonetheless. Then Handerson pressed a certain button, and the sunroof started to close, pinching me in place. We all laughed and I climbed back inside.
Eventually we made it to the bottom of the grade and started driving along the highway beside the river. We followed this for a long time, and eventually stopped by the side of the road at a pulloff. There was a nice little rivulet running down from the hills and under the road feeding into the river, so I took it upon myself to crawl through the pipe under the road all the way to the other side. Upon emerging, it was plainly evident my hair had caught at least a pound of spiders' web on the way. Heh heh, the cost of fun I guess. We all then roamed along the rocky shoreline, jumping from rock to rock to log and enjoying ourselves, but eventually we had to go back to the cars and get on with it.
An hour or two later, we finally arrived at the place: a little parking lot at the start of something like a mile long trail. And the best part? Over here it was snowy! Bobby and I quickly ran to this huge mound of snow, both trying to get to the top first, each pulling the other down and trying to shove him out of the way, and more often than not getting snow in his face or falling over backwards. It was great. And then I spotted something that I'd always wanted to do: there was a little tiny bathhouse with a roof totally full of snow, perfect for creating an artificial snow slide. A moment later I was clambering up and trying to get all the snow to fall off the roof, but no matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't budge. Eventually I had to let it be, for everybody had already started down the trail and I would be left behind. It was a nice trail, not very wide, and the snow was hard packed and offered but little traction. It meandered along the side of the hill with a fairly steep climb on the one side, and an equally steep drop on the other. Along the bottom of this hill ran a nice stream, not so small as a rivulet or creek, nor so large as a small river. This stream playfully produced pleasant sounds of laughter as it skipped over the rocks and bumped into the frozen banks: it rivaled even some of the most beautiful of bird choirs.
By and by, after walking a bit further and talking along the way, we arrived. There it was, a nice little hotspring nestled among the rocks above the stream. All the rock face was free of snow because of the water running down from the spring which collected in a pool partway down. If you didn't already know, water from a hotspring is hot. That's why they call it a hotspring, because it's hot. Why don't we have coldsprings? I don't know. But I do know that many springs produce cold water. But that's besides the point: this spring was hot, and that's why the rocks were free of snow. At any rate, we were soon all getting into the pool created by the hotspring. Well, except for me. I had a funner idea to do first. I clambered down the rocks and logs down to the streamside. Froh called out, "What are you do-ing!" and I just laughed and carried on. I was now at the stream itself, and I looked around for a deep enough spot, where I waded in. It was cold. Most of the water do doubt came from snowmelt which is notorious for being cold, and today was no exception. The spot I had chosen was perfect; I submerged beneath the water and delighted in the coldness of it all, and the current was pretty nice too, bringing an unending trail of fresh cold water in its train. I resurfaced, then went under again, and then decided that was enough and began making my way up the rocks again toward the hotspring. Now that my hands were like little frozen ice mallets, I found that the rocks were harder and sharper on the way up than they had been on the way down. Funny how that works. But by and by I made it to the top.
The hotspring was a warm relief to the falling temperature of my hands and feet, it was so great! There's nothing quite like it. If you ever get the chance to go to one, you should. When I got there, Handerson, Mandy, and Charli decided they'd go down to the stream proper as well, so they took off. The rest of us, meanwhile, talked and laughed and just generally had a good time. Eventually the three girls who'd gone down to the stream returned, but only Charli had followed through with the idea of going swimming down there. Perhaps the other two didn't actually plan on going into the water in the first place, but oh well. By this time I was well warmed up and ready to go do something cold and fun again, and I had an idea. I jumped out of the water and ran to the trail again where there was snow, and found a nice little snowbank. Heh heh. It's always fun to dive into a snowbank. And so I did.
Let's take a little intermission here. This is the part that I had actually intended on writing when I started writing this post. For some reason I feel necessitated to include everything that lead up to it even though it actually had no bearing on what was about to occur. Oh well. Perhaps I should get better at writing hare posts, not mammoth ones. Anyways, I'd also like to point out that if you take the 'v' out of 'dive' you get 'die'. Coincidence? I think not. Also, did you notice that I hadn't depth checked the snowbank to make sure it was deep enough? I hadn't. You should always do this. I also said it's 'always' fun to dive into a snowbank. This is demonstrably false. With that said, let's continue.
So I jumped up and dove into the snowbank. It wasn't a shallow dive either, it was a full on swan dive. I was really getting into the spirit of pretending the snow was water, which it was clearly not. My arms, head, and tips of my shoulders made it into the bank before my hands struck the hillside rather forcefully, sending pain racing up my central nervous system. You've never seen a wave of depolarization so fast. The rest of my body not in the snow that flopped over down the hill, leaving my head and arms in the snow. Discombobulated, I pulled my head out of the bank and assessed the situation. There was a little bit of pain here and there, but an uncanny amount centered on my left hand and ring finger. My hand did not wish to move. So I walked back to the spring and rested it. I found out later that I'd fractured the carpals of my hand, and it was a full six weeks before it would fully heal. All that from one decision to go swimming in a snowbank that was far too shallow.
After that we continued sitting in the spring, and eventually it started getting dark, so we packed up and headed back to the cars. It was much more interesting making our way back in the dark, but we got there eventually and were fortified at the end by Christy's banana bread. The drive back was uneventful, except that we ended up taking a very roundabout way of getting back and ended up on a lonely country road. We stopped at the crest of a hill and told the other car that we wanted to look at the stars, which we did for a couple minutes before getting cold and carrying on. And so ended the day. Each went make to their respective homes and we called it a day.
