I need to confess to my own stupidity and tell you what happened to me this week ... Tuesday Ed was gone, and would be gone for several hours.  Monday he told me he'd made a new path -- but he didn't tell me it was a dead end.  (All the other paths he's made for me are circular, or winding, and start at one point in our 3 acre "lawn" and come back to another spot in the "lawn.")  Anyhow, Tuesday morning, just after Ed had left, I was feeling pretty good, and Daisy wanted to go outside, so we headed down the new path. 

It was wonderous, awe-filled, God-filled ... In 1977, that area had been an open, plowed field -- and, rather than plant it with corn or soybeans, Ed let me hand plant it with our very first "native" habitat.  I had seveal thousand seeds, some tiny current bushes, some native rose hips,and a very, very few tiny trees that were NOT the Black Walnuts that dominate our property.  The next year, the same area was more or less fenced in,  so we could raise two calves every year, and the "two calves per year" lasted longer than I did...  The calves lived on the "grass" that looked just like unmowed crab grass mixed with field grasses.  Anyhow, to make a very long story short, that particular area of our land has been cut off from my ability to walk, since 1980.  Now it's better than I ever imagined when I planted those seeds!!!  Have you ever seen the 6-7 foot high spiney nettles in full bloom?  Or real golden rod arching up and over -- so you walk upright UNDER it?  Have you sat absolutely still, in the center of a meadow full of wild rose bushes and native grasses long enough so the birds come back in the hundreds, some to eat rose hips as big as the nail on my thumb, while most of the others are busy working the native version of sunflowers, the seed heads of native grass, and rabbits, mice, and even raccons are out and busy?  I admit I sat down only because I literally could go no further, but I assumed I was very close to the house, and if I could catch my breath, ease the muscle spasms, and kept following the trail, it would be shorter to continue on, rather than go back the way I had come.  Yet ... PRAISE GOD!  What a wonderful experience that time in the meadow was!  It was like being in Eden, with my Creator and 3 pounds of pure love, in the form of a three pound dog playing in the wilderness. Native grasses DO have slightly different colors, and the ones with seed heads have purple edges.  And everything is so very, very high.  Including the now hot sun!  It was so warm I left my sweater there, rather accidently, when it caught on a rose bush.

I finally got up and struggled on, still thinking going forward was the fastest way back to the house.  I didn't realize I was still headed AWAY from the house until I reached the currents -- and a "bog" that used to be a slightly damp spot in the lowest spot on the furthest SE corner of our property.  It's now a true bog, no water showing, but "swamp land" none the less, full of HUGE current bushes, and several other plants I recognized from a childhood often spent roaming in a really BIG swamp, but I don't know the names of those plants.  They found their way to that tiny locale via birds; different birds than my meadow experience.  I don't know how many hundreds of hummingbirds were "bathing" against the wet ferns.  Still, I knew where I was, and knew I was in trouble.  I was a quarter mile from the house.  Even though it was wet, I lay on the ground, breathed, prayed, and thought I should stay there -- but then the sun moved far enough that the only place to actually be down, completely down, laying on my side, was in bright sunlight.  I've had a serious case of sunstroke once, and am 30 times more likely to get it again.  One side, the part of me touching the ground, was still wet -- but it was swamp, it provided humidity, but NOT evaporation, the sun was very strong on my head, and the top side of me was HOT... I had to get to shade!  But the path dead ended at the bog...

I knew there should be deep, deep shade just west of me.  I could no longer walk.  I crawled -- under current bushes (getting all wet again in the process, but the "cool" felt very good) and then under rose bushes.  I couldn't find a spot to lie down, and I thought if I stopped crawling I couldn't start again.   The shade SHOULD be not more than another 20 feet...  When Daisy Dog ran out and around, coming back to me when she "lost" me, she was covered in the type of prickly seed that exist only in deep woods...  By now my wet clothes were very, very cold.  I didn't notice I wasn't shivering.  I didn't recognize the beginning of hypothermia...  I don't actually remember reaching the deer's glade.  I remember Daisy was amoung the deer in a clearing in deep woods, and the deer were ignoring HER just as she was ignoring the deer.  Everything had an unreal quality.  But there WAS a wonderful clearing, covered in deep shade, and the moss was still wonderfully warm with the heat of the deer who had been staying there for the day.....  I curled up on my side with Daisy pressed tight against me and went to sleep.  And that's the last I remember.  I have some very vague memories of trying to find some place warm, and not being able to get INTO the sunlight.  The rest of the story comes from Ed.

When he got home, almost 6 hours after he left, he heard Daisy crying an "alert" in the far back woods.  He checked the house; I wasn't there.  He put the food on the counter, the frozen food in the freezer, and went back out.  Daisy was still crying "alert," and she hadn't run up to the house.  He took the truck back to the old woods, and Daisy came out to meet it.  Then she'd run away -- not always in exactly the same direction, but always NW of the SE corner of our old woods.  He took the truck to the end of one of his wood-cutting trails, in the NW corner of our property.  Daisy met him again, this time "alerting", running a few feet, and "alerting" again.  That's how he found me, more than half a mile from the house, in the neighbor's woods.  He couldn't wake me up.  I was on the ground, more than half an acre from his truck, and he CARRIED me to the truck.  Admittedly I've lost a LOT of weight in the past 10 months, but I'm still around 150 pounds.  Ed is over 65, and starting to feel his age, yet he picked up, lifted, and carried a limp body back to that truck... Adrenelin does wonders no matter how old one is.  Then he took me straight to the hospital. 

He's only told me they took me into the ER on a stetcher, and wouldn't let him see me for over 2 hours.  All I remember is incredible pain, even for me.  First I felt like my skin was being burned off of me, then I got caught in the dreaded "muscle spasm cycle" unique to those who have several severely damaged nerves inside the spinal column OR the type of brain damage I've had since my big stroke in 2003 -- and of course, I have BOTH the nerve damage AND the stroke damage....  I *do* remember finally getting enough morphine.  When I told Ed I remembered that last boost of morphine, he said they had come to him and asked if I'd ever "taken morphine regularly", and, of course, I lived on the stuff from 1991 until last December, when I qiut very suddenly and got started on this latest downhill slide that no one has diagnosised.  From the amount of time it took me to come out of a morphine haze (which most people enjoy, but gives me very real "nightmares" from my childhood abuse) I'm guessing they had to give me a near-lethal dose to stop the "muscle spasm cycle/stroke" that could easily have killed me.  (The "muscle spasm cycle" used to just be very, very painful, but now my involuntary nervous system gets involved.  It's the first time it's happened to me since the stroke itself.)

There are, of course, consequences....   My "cognition" level has dropped again, possibly permanently, and I'm absolutely covered in poison ivy -- and am "allergic" to steriods...  But there's a good side to it all too...  I spent part of a morning in God's meadow, with no noise other than the little critters that inhabit our earth, and I prayed for help and was blessed with beauty ("I will hold beauty as my shield against despair/ when all else breaks/ I will cling to it" ... poet unknown, but I memorized it and "adopted" it as "mine" at age 10, long before I came to know God.)  I saw a bog that now blesses our land, and now I know the birds and little critters are still here, even when we can't afford to feed them close to the house.  Once again I heard what I think of as "God's laughter"  in a world of utter silence  except the sounds of nature -- the birdsong, the loud buzz of bees, combined with the sound of wind in high grasses, the tree frogs near a bog, hummingbirds and a tiny dog happy as only something very innocent can be happy ...  When I was a child and living in a place so horrible I didn't let myself remember it for 30 years or more, those were the sights and sounds I sought for comfort, a sense of love and being loved, and sometimes as my only source of food... Now I think I'd borrow Steinbeck's phrasing, and call it "The Song of the Family" -- the family of God ....

So please, praise God with me!! I'm alive, and refreshed with His presence, and pray FOR me, for my brain may be permenantly damaged  -- Go gently all, and go with God