Week #4 - November 11, 2005
Look at the picture below; what do you see? What happened to the person being carried? Where are they coming from; and where are they going? Where was this picture taken?
Write for 500 words about this scene and post a comment.
Click here to read this week's entries.
Write for 500 words about this scene and post a comment.
Click here to read this week's entries.
posted by Paul Keetch at
5:44 PM
1 Comments:
This photo was taken in 2004, during a trip into the mountains with several friends. One of the members of the group took this photo after we had scrambled down a talus slope carrying poor Christopher. That’s me in the grey sweatshirt.
I remember that day like it was yesterday; like I was young again. Today’s my seventy-fifth birthday … did you know that? Of course you did—that’s one of the reasons you asked me to talk to you today. Isn’t it? I thought so.
But that day … that day I was just barely twenty-two. We’d gone out, eight of us, for a couple of days in the mountains. Figured we’d hit a few peaks, camp in the wilderness, swim in mountain lakes; you know … guy stuff. On the way up Chris—the one in the stretcher—twisted his ankle pretty bad. It swelled up so fast we knew we had to get him down and quick. So, we rigged up a stretcher we could lay him in and all carry together, then started back down.
Now this was through a talus slope mind you—a rock fall. It’s like a maze made of rocks and boulders set on a forty-five degree slope. Not an easy task; not in the least.
About a third of the way down Chris … well he passed out, from the pain I suppose. And before we reached the halfway point he’d stopped breathing. We laid him down and did everything we could think of to get him going again but … well, I guess it was just his time. We weren’t going to leave him there, that’s for sure. It was no Everest at any rate, so we carried him down and out.
When we got him back to town and brought him to the hospital they called the cops who had to do a full investigation. We just wanted to go home and try to make sense of what happened, but there we were in the holding cells—different ones, so we couldn’t ‘corroborate our stories’—and in the interrogation room, in turns.
In the end they let us all go; there was no evidence of foul play or any other suspicious circumstances. Turns out Chris had some problem with his blood … it wouldn’t clot. So when he sprained his ankle it caused internal bleeding that just didn’t stop. He bled to death and we didn’t see a drop of it. Can you believe that?
I remember that day very well.
But you already knew all that too. So why is really that you wanted to talk to me today?
By
Paul Keetch, at 9:49 PM
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