Watch your step, walker

One of the benefits of my career paths is that I like to walk and my professions have required a significant number of steps a day with some jobs requiring more steps than others and some steps being more fun than others.

They do not call Rangers, “riders” for a reason. As a warden, the walks were far more pleasant if not almost as dangerous but required less weight, fewer time constraints and fewer miles but long all the same and frequent. Enjoying walking tied into the happy requirement of patrolling nature in the Big Woods. It was not uncommon to do ten to twenty-mile strolls during a week.

Wardens are often chastised for “never leaving their vehicles.” Unfortunately, there are important reasons that they need to be in them often, but I had the pleasure of being publicly chastised in editorials for sneakily being too far away from my vehicle! Once again, proving that wardens are never right.

With all that information taken in stride, there was one thing that I learned from this. People fear danger in the woods such as rattlers, bears, coyotes, drug plot booby traps, trigger happy hiders, wolves, mountain lions, big foots and so on. In my extensive traversing of our native topography, I have found that there are several hazards to be aware of but they are none of the above. Rather beware of two things. In this walker’s case, it has been walking and myself. That is right, I have been nearly taken out at least four times just by walking through the forest in one way or another and have been very lucky to escape alive. The most dangerous time to walk through the woods is right about now; January through February.

Let me tell you how I almost met my demise, on seemingly innocuous strolls. Incident number one happened while on a patrol through the forest that landed me over seven miles away from the start point. While traversing down a steep, frozen incline, I stepped over a log and it gave way and I began sliding downhill. The log caught me and took me with it. I narrowly escaped getting free of the tree before it pinned me to a standing oak. If I had been caught there, I would have frozen to death overnight and my body being where it was and as far as it was out in the woods would probably never have been found.

Time number two, happened while coming down a steep, frozen mountain while far from my vehicle. The ground became so frozen that I found it easier to slide down the hill than walk. This worked out okay, until I was sliding out of control, could not stop and almost went over a cliff. I stopped by careening off three or more trees at high speed.

The third time happened while I was sneaking around trying to observe poaching. My foot fell into a hole on Stevenson Dam in the deep snow and between the shifting rocks that made up the face of the dam. No matter what I did, I could not get my foot freed. The anglers did not know I was there and left and I was too embarrassed to call out for help, figuring that it was better to freeze to death. I stayed silent while contemplating chewing on my leg. Eventually, and I do mean much later and being lucky for wearing slip on muck boots, I was able to get my foot out of the boot. If I had been wearing laced boots, I would still be there. I walked back to my vehicle with one sore and cold foot in a sock. The next day it took a six-foot lever to move the rocks and retrieve my crushed boot.

My last experience happened when I was off duty and running sap lines on our mountain in five feet of snow. I fell and ended up hanging upside down, suspended in about five feet of snow. I had snow shoes on and a backpack on and I wasn’t able to touch the ground. I was stuck and suspended in snow for hours trying to get my pack off and/ or a snow shoe off to get out of the snow. There was a moment when I thought it wasn’t going to happen but eventually and through lots of steady persistence and resisting exhaustion, I was successful.

Sure, other more traditional things have happened over the decades, like falling through ice, trees falling, being in the woods about a mile away from the tornado that took out Kinzua Bridge, walking into meth labs, booby trapped drug grows, angry people with guns, strange animal encounters, stepping over rattlers and more. But to this day, the closest I have come to an untimely demise was a simple misstep and muck boots. Watch your step out there.

See you along the stream.