After pulling into Bake Oven Knob Shelter (10 mile day) around supper time, my first chore was to go fetch enough water for dinner that night and breakfast the next morning. I walked .3 miles to a spring carrying two water bladders and three water bottles.
Found a nice spring and got myself situated sitting on a rock with feet straddling the spring. It takes a while to dip a 20oz Gatorade bottle in the pool of water a dozen times to fill both bladders and two other bottles. By the time I'm done my legs are usually tired of all the squatting and reaching down into the pool of water.
With full water vessels and aching legs I started to shift my weight around to get my feet underneath me so I could stand up. Just as I got my butt 6" or 8" off the ground I could tell I was a little off balance so I quickly sat back down to try again. But I was still off balance enough that I did more than just sit down, I started rolling backward.
It was one of those slow motion deals where you know something bad is going to happen but not sure what part of your body is going to get the bad. Part of the problem is I was not just rolling onto my back, I was rolling downhill and picking up a little rotation speed in the process. The thought flashed through my mind that some body part of mine would hit a rock (that's what the world is made of around here) to slow me down. Would it be my back, neck, or head? Would the rock be low and flat or raised and pointed?
Good answers to both: My mid back on the left side struck a low and flat rock. Way better than my head on pointed. Just before I came to rest I felt my lower three ribs go bump-bump-bump as I slid 3" or 4" down the rock. I laid there with my legs and feet higher than my shoulders and the pain in my back is saying you are not going anywhere anyway. I'm like a Box Turtle on it's back.
After a minute or two to calm down and convince myself I wasn't going to stay there and die, I got rolled over enough that I could get up. Right away my back said don't twist, don't reach down to the right, and certainly don't pick up anything heavy, like water containers, with the right hand. Obey your back. He is the boss right now.
Once I got the water all picked up and started back up the trail to camp, I was spittin' nails thinking that I may have just put the kibosh on our hike. When I got to camp I made sure Best Wife couldn't tell anything was wrong. Not a chance I was going to tell her what idiotic smooth move I just did. But after 20 or 30 minutes I let on that I tweaked my back a little but no big deal. Felt real real good to lay down that night, but it didn't work out at all to roll over in the bag.
Oh well, live and learn. I was real lucky that the straight down pack weight on my hips didn't have much affect on my back muscle. Hiking is still all good, sleeping not so much.
First picture is looking down on the Deleware River and I-80 near Deleware Water Gap, PA. Great view.
Second picture is the Williams family, formerly of Ashburn, VA, who drove to meet us on the trail with tons of great food. THANKS TO THE WILLIAMS.
Next two pics are walking across the I-80 bridge over the Delaware River. When 18-wheelers drove by the live load mid span deflection in the bridge deck was wild. Every time a truck went by it felt like we were in the backyard jumping on a trampoline.
Last three pics are around Sunfish Pond, NJ. Beautiful area. So far all of NJ is not the armpit of America.
I learned “a pint’s a pound the world around” from my first chemistry teacher at BYU. It’s pretty useful knowledge every once in a while.
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