To this day, I can't explain why I'm still alive. I should be dead. My mother and I were visiting my grandmother and uncle during my summer vacation. I was about 10 years old. They lived in a very rural area. The valley where they lived was quite narrow and ran from north to south. It could take 5 minutes to travel from one side to the other and both sides of this valley were heavily wooded. West mountain side, very green and wet and east side a bit drier.
A stream wound its way along the length of the valley. It fed on melting snow and ice from the towering mountains nearby. In the spring, the stream became a raging torrent of water, several times its summer width. It very often flooded the bottom of the valley, where there was fertile agricultural land. Grandma's farm was often flooded in the spring if the weather suddenly turned bad. This would cause the snow that fed the stream to melt rapidly, turning it into a huge monstrous stream of ever-increasing water.
In the summer, the stream settled down to a fraction of its spring size. There was a strip the size of a freeway lane, the main current area, flanked by side pools fed by creeks. These lateral pools were excavated by spring floods. Much of the river bank was undermined by the same water force that dredged the side pools.
It was a hot summer day. My mother and I went fishing to the stream. We walked across a field, then through some bushes to gain access to a creek. I was carrying a fishing rod and a can of worms to use as fishing bait. At the edge of the creek was a rough path that led to where one of the pools glistened. We walked close to the edge of the bank and saw that the floodwater had eaten away the bank a bit and weakened its stability. I was warned to be careful not to go too close to the edge as it could be unstable.
What I remember next is a bit like a series of images or flashes. I remember the bank suddenly breaking away from under me. I felt that sinking feeling of panic. There was a mad dash to the creek bank. I recall flashes of trying to grab roots sticking out of the creek bank. All these flashes happen in the blink of an eye. And then click. I slept. I dreamed. That warm fuzzy sleep feeling you get when you're in the comfiest bed and you're only half awake. Suddenly, a pastel light green haze surrounded me. No more awareness of anything else. I'm just floating, dreaming and comfortable, in my own little green nirvana.
The next thing I remember was my mother pulling me to shore by my arm. I was all wet, cold and muddy. I have no real memory of what happened in the real world, outside of me, during my time in the fishing pool.
From what my mother told me, I understand that she could not reach me. She couldn't swim herself. All she could do was yell at me to kick or tread water. She also told me to raise my hand so that she could pull me to the bank of the stream. I don't remember any of it. Everything is empty.
I remember taking a nice hot bath afterwards to warm up. The bath water was fine. Anything deeper is not for me.
This event taught me a healthy respect for warnings about riverbanks that might collapse. Since then I have gone boat fishing, but never to the creek.
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