Would you comment on the merits of my brief recollection?

Sometimes, a single event — one contingent yet resonant roll of the dice — holds within it the power to shift our perspective, awaken our slumbering self, and remake our life in fundamental and meaningful ways; my remarkable and self-defining moment of recognition, my galvanizing event, occurred on October 12, 1981 — Columbus Day, ironically also the time-honored “day of discovery” — a crisp, bright autumnal afternoon lost in the midst of the grand and gaudy season of change, when nature itself announces in still, plangent splendor its imminent death. The day itself was spent in the most mundane of labors: felling and sectioning trees on Willard Mountain, then transporting those sections down the steeply sloping terrain in a large, weather-beaten metal wagon hitched to an ancient tractor. I had begun my Sisyphean toils at 7 a.m. and had worked without pause, and it was now mid-afternoon and thoughts of rest and food had long since taken possession of my mind. My initial trepidation at the thought of driving the old Case tractor on a ski slope had begun to dissipate as I made one heart-stopping journey after another; indeed, I’d almost forgotten hat so few hours before I’d never driven a tractor at all. On my final descent of the day, I was reminded! The tractor slid out of gear and suddenly I was acutely aware of the poor brakes I had noticed earlier in the day. In only a few seconds, which seemed like hours to my alarmed psyche, I was moving under the inexorable force of gravity — and perhaps fate — at 50 miles per hour. I knew I had to jump.

After a couple of abortive attempts, I finally achieved my cherished end, free of several tons of hurtling wood and steel but scarcely better off. The wagon and its load of lumber struck me squarely on the back, and in an instant I was transformed from a young, conditioned athlete into a poster boy for trauma care — I had one shattered tibia and the other leg was nearly severed at the hip; vertebrae were displaced; ribs and organs were bruised; fillings were ejected from teeth. Eventually, the ambulance arrived and I was ferried off to the local hospital to be put back together again. I was to spend the next 17 days there and the next four months hobbling about on crutches.

Throughout those recuperative months, and the many to follow, I had opportunity to reflect and to see more clearly the connection between choices and outcomes. I was told by a few people, doubtless well meaning, that if I neglected my reconditioning and my recovery were less complete, I would probably receive a more handsome final settlement from worker’s compensation; I did not attend to their suggestion. To do so would have been to willingly surrender my quality of life, my very autonomy; instead, I exercised incessantly, and made every effort to be better than ever. I could not strategically choose self-defeat for hopes of pecuniary gain.

Yes, on my day of discovery, and in the hard and toilsome months that followed, I was reborn as a stronger, and better, person, one more acutely aware of the fragile thread by which a human life hangs, of the skull grinning in at the banquet, and in ways I had not previously understood, I began to more fully take possession of that great miracle I had been given, that present I had never opened. I began to live.

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Tagged with: abortive attempts • case tractor • columbus day • day of discovery • defining moment • final descent • force of gravity • imminent death • initial trepidation • mid afternoon • miles per hour • old case • poster boy • roll of the dice • ski slope • tibia • trauma care • vertebrae • willard mountain • wood and steel

Filed under: Ski Fitness

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