Chased

When I finally woke from unconsciousness, there was confusion in what I saw. Before me was an endless bed of yellow-brown sand, punctuated with particulates of white and larger bits of black.

As I lay there, I slowly came to my sense, realizing I was face-down in the half-light of a deep crevasse of Utah earth. It slowly came back to me about how I ended up in this position.

It had begun about a mile north and east, further up the mountain, where I happened to come across two dune-buggies, each carrying two men. Immediately, I knew I was in trouble as they began to race in circles around me and eventually started chasing me from one out-cropping to another.

Slowly, I wiggled my toes, flexed my ankles, knees and hips as I pushed myself onto my knees. Still severely dizzy I decided I should roll onto my butt and not attempt to stand jus’ yet.

Something was wrong with my right-eye; I could not see from it. Furthermore, it felt as if glued shut.

They were practically on top of me when I found myself teetering on the edge of a slot-canyon, whose bottom I couldn’t see. I tried desperately to stop, then to leap the distance, but instead, I fell downward into the blackness of the abyss.

God had smiled on me. I recalled nothing of the fall and as far as I could tell I had only some abrasions and a bunch of bruises – save for the inability to open my eye.

Touching the cheekbone beneath the shuttered eye, I felt the roughness of sand and other debris sticking to my skin. There was also a sticky substance around the area which led me to feel the top right part of my head – a deep gash had bled down over my eye and with the drying aid of the fine desert silt, had pasted my eyelid closed.

It took me a few minutes to work the sandy loam from my eyelid and to begin blinking again. That’s when I felt the pain from the cut on my head and decided it needed further investigation.

Fearful of what I might find, I gently pushed down around the wound. I was happy to learn that the bone below the wound was not spongy or sharp – therefore my skull wasn’t fractured.

Slowly, using the nearby cavernous wall, I dragged myself to my feet. I tried to look up towards the opening, from where I dropped, but a sharp pain in my left shoulder prevented me from raising my head.

Running my right hand over my shoulder, I couldn’t detect an injury. I had dislocated my shoulder some years before, so I knew what I should be feeling – but nothing.

As I tried to raise my left arm, a shooting pain nearly drove me to the ground. And as I fought off the desire to pass out, I saw my little finger on my left hand twisted and sticking out at an odd angle.

Regaining my composure, I looked for a place where the light from above shined on the sandy bottom and moved to that spot. Once there, I pulled my rucksack from my shoulders and removed my first aid kit.

It took me all of two minutes to shift my broken pinky back into a somewhat normal position, and to tape it in place using my ring finger. It also took all of my strength not to scream out in pain; I didn’t know if the buggies were still nearby and I didn’t want to alert them to my survival.