Blog
June 12, 2007
In Memoriam
In near-freezing water, a person can survive some short amount of time, something less than ten minutes, much less depending upon whom you ask. Under these conditions, the human body will almost immediately divert its resources from its voluntary muscles to its inner organs in an effort to keep itself alive. More heart-beating, less swimming.
If moving swiftly enough through rocks, a crystal clear mountain stream becomes virtually opaque.
A gallon of water weighs eight pounds and even a small mountain creek might run 3000 cubic feet per minute while the winter snows melt. Physicists might find the force equations contained herein to be telling, but more telling is that a river will move a person, but not a large rock. Even the person propelled with this force cannot move said rock. A 15 mile per hour current is more a force than a 15 mile per hour wind.
A person cannot breathe water.
News coverage always seems reasonably accurate when you read it, but offensively inadequate if you were there.
When something untoward happens to a person in this world, it happens in a black box, creating a SchroedingerÕs cat moment in which all outcomes are possible. The person is fine, the person is dead, it is somebody you love, somebody you do not know. Virtually all of the untoward things in this world happen without any particular individualÕs knowledge, but sometimes the emergency vehicles blare past and can only reasonably be going one place, so that you can see the black box, but cannot see inside. Begging does not affect the contents.
Trauma and tragedy are universal human experience. So is friendship.
To the friend I hardly knew, I hope it is warm and dry on the other side. To my brothers in the water, I am torn. Part of me hopes that you all quit your jobs and wander the world dispensing the bravery, character and thoughtless concern for your fellow man that you did on the river. The rest of me hopes that you live out your days facing nothing more difficult than closing time.
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