As much as I loathe what’s going on in the streets of America with people disappearing at the hands of a renegade State, it wasn’t something I expected to happen in my own family. After all, we’re white. All of us; at worst, we’re a little blotchy. At high noon in the summer, you can’t see us at all. And yet. My very sister disappeared the other day. I had no idea what to do except call a lawyer.
We were ambling along a lovely trail in an old growth forest, chatting away. I was in front. Then something changed, something subtle. It wasn’t that I heard something, exactly. More the opposite. Bobbie had been talking, and then she wasn’t. I turned around. She was nowhere to be seen. Plumb gone.
I dashed back to a spot marked by an unusual flattening of the vegetation and sure enough, there was my entire sister, about twelve feet straight down off the trail. Or straight enough down that I wasn’t sure how she was planning to get back up. Odds are she didn’t have a plan in mind when she went down. I did ask if she was okay and she said she was, but she always says she’s okay, and one of these times she’s bound to be mistaken. I mean, we are talking about a 76-year-old woman all heaped up at the bottom of a short cliff. If she’d kept sliding she’d be in the Salmon River but evidently the gravity let up shy of that. Anyway I walked up the trail and down the trail and couldn’t see any obvious way for her to come back topside.
She didn’t trip or tip over. She had merely put her right foot down on the trail and her left foot down on a place similar in every way except for there not being any trail there.
Only two things to do. One, take a picture. I do not have that bloodthirsty journalistic instinct so I wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t said she was okay, but I do have a blog to feed. Two, call a lawyer.
Really, it didn’t have to be a lawyer. Almost any man would do, as long as he had the standard muscle kit that I find so admirable in the class. Obviously a strong woman would do as well, and there are plenty of strong women out there, who are not me. But I’m me, and we had to wait till someone happened by.
As it happened, nobody happened by. But Bobbie was already trying to right herself like an overturned June bug and after a few more tumbles began to hitch herself straight up by hanging onto our native sword ferns, which have admirable personal integrity. I sat on the trail with my legs hanging over the edge for the final snatching, and yes, this is indeed a perfect scenario for landing two septuagenarians in the bottom of a pit, but somehow she grobbed hold of me and topped out on the trail again.
This is the thing. Bobbie may have abandoned her original name 55 years ago, but there’s still a Brewster core in there. We are compact, dense, low-to-the-ground folk, and we are blessed with a stout armature. You can knock us down—it’s easy, you don’t even get any points for it—but we’re dang hard to kill.
Bobbie made it back to the car and even hiked the next day. She’s good as new. Well, not quite good as new. As much as I hate to say it—
Now we need ICE.
MAGA is responsible for making me cringe at things that I never gave a thought to before. The flag, for instance. Every time I see it outside someone’s home, I think “Republican.” If there is one also on their truck (and it’s ALWAYS a truck) then I think “MAGA.”
Now it’s the very word “ice.” Now that it’s summer, when I go to the store, I jot down a note to myself on my shopping list to bring ice. (For any foods that need to be kept cold in my insulated bag until I get home.) Whenever I write that note, or look at it to remind me to bring the ice, I cringe.
Crosses are another thing. I used to think, “oh, they’re just very religious.” Now I think, “MAGA.”
If you go to the rallies, you’ll be happy to notice we’re taking that flag back!
I’ll be damned if I let them take the flag from me too. I proudly have one hanging from my front porch. The only exception is every Saturday from 12 to 1 when I go to our local protest. The flag goes with me.
A friend of mine has handed out over 2,000 small flags at protests. This is her website https://oneflagunited.com/
I wonder how close that river is. I might have been pretty dang scared. There’s been a few stories in the news of late describing people and buffaloes who tumbled into oblivion just by walking along.
I like that you took a picture, though. Good strategy to normalize the situation.
Our neighbor’s big, ugly mastiff, so old he couldn’t easily get off the floor, wandered over to our woods one day and tumbled down the embankment towards our little stream. He got stuck and couldn’t seem to get up, or down. His owner started screaming for help until eventually other household members arrived. The strongest one climbed down to the dog, took up a position on the bank with a stickerbush helping. She kept the dog from finishing his descent (into the merely 3″ deep water, though admittedly the water was pretty cold). I remember her cradling the beast as another family member called the police.
Well, the police was her husband.
He arrived in a cop car, strode forcefully like Churchill down to the embankment, and commanded everyone on the scene to “CALM DOWN!”
Would you yell “CALM DOWN!” to a statue of the Pieta? Because that’s what it looked like.
Eventually it was decided that trying to scooch the massive dog uphill would be inadvisable, so instead she stepped aside and let him gently finish sliding into the water. He stood up, shook himself off, walked down the stream a few feet, and clambered out.
Well thank you for all that. It was a fun ride!
I’m glad your sister wasn’t hurt. I sorta feel responsible. I was wondering about other Brewster siblings recently and could only think of Margaret (correct?).
In one of my stupider moments as a child I jumped over the edge of a borrow pit. My friends and I had been doing it for several hours. We’d fall four feet or so into soft sand and it was all a lark.
I don’t know how far I fell the last time. Long enough to feel the air rushing by and know I was still falling. When I hit feet first, it felt like my spine was going to come out my mouth. I walked home, but that probably didn’t help my spine health.
I had a sister Margaret who died in 2008 and a brother David who died in 1990. My parents died in 1980 and ’81. It’s just me, Bobbie, and our niece Elizabeth now. And none of us had children. End of the line!
This story could have ended so sadly, I’m glad you all were able to get to the happy ending, even if it involved ICE.
Ceci
Crushed ice! Best kind!
I had a trail surprise like this recently at Cape Lookout- mighta gone swimming on my way to Japan- but- I got hooked up on some blackberries (ouch) and as it was a few scratches and a bruised ego were all I had to show for the slippery rock I so casually stepped on,,,, and of course there were some young folk right behind me – —-
Oh dear. Not sure I’d want to be saved by Himalayan blackberries. They do extract a fee.
I’m guessing the frozen water kind not the thugs with masks and weapons. I do hope she continues to be okay.
She’s as good as she’s gonna get.
Our latest tale of a not quite kiss of extinction: My daughter and her son, and I and my wife, were all competing to complete a set of hikes in almost northern California. She took a bottle of water to a challenging one mile descent to the Yuba River call Yuba Drop. Little did she know that after you drive almost an hour to a trail start, you have to hike for three miles just to get to the start of the challenging one mile descent to the river. Her son drank his water freely so she shared the rest of hers. They got to the goal, but on the return she suffered from heat exhaustion in ninety-some weather. Fortunate to have cell service, she requested a water delivery from her sister. I was called out of a too-long viewing of suffragette movies with my wife who accompanied me on the rescue mission. My elder angel daughter delivered the water after hours or effort and all were happy and safe at the end of a six hour rescue, though we were all tired and achy from the adventure.
My brother and I went on a similar hike to the Pacific Ocean on the coast of Washington State. One drives to a parking lot in the forest with no ocean in sight and then hikes through the forest to the beach. For unknown reasons the trail is laid out as a switchback that meanders through the forest. The effect is that the distance to be traveled is tripled. My guess is that it was laid out that way to minimize the grade traversed. Or maybe the persons who constructed it wanted a job that lasted the summer.
Reduce erosion? Maximize slug encounters?
Like and like!
Speaking of slugs, we were talking about a slug exchange at one point. I forgot about it and you’ve had more than enough in your plate to be excused for forgetting about it.
We were whuh? Oh wait. You wanted me to send you a slug I think. Yes, I forgot. I do not want your slug, however.
I really needed that slug!
Anon. That is a real good way to die. Well, it might not be good, but it can be effective.