This trip we drove around the long way all the way back to the bridge and fished up stream from their to the falls and up the falls returning to eat lunch and drive back the long way looking for wild berries on the way back. We had driven back out the road we came down and had stopped at a place that Pa had spotted that looked good for berries. We pulled over, Pa and Kent got out and started looking for berries and Dave and I got out and started messing around. There was a small shale hill/cliff we decided needed to be climbed. Dave went up first and I followed. We messed around on top for a while and then heard Pa calling for us to come back so we could move on to a new place. I began my descent down the crumbling ledge and about 3 feet down slipped. I remember rolling over and over down the mound bouncing every few feet as I reconnected with the earth. After skidding to a stop I hear Dave from behind me shouting move there's a rock coming. The shale shards continued to shower on top of me as I jumped out of the ways seconds before being cold cocked by a small shale boulder. Shock of what just happened numbed me to the pain in my lower right flank. Dave took a safer path down the mound behind me and came to my aid while Pa and Kent rushed over to check on me also. Shockingly my only major injury was a laceration on my lower right back. It was bleeding profusely and needed some first aid attention which we had none of. The drive back home the long way was a good 2 plus hours from where we were so Pa decided fording the creek where the bridge used to be was what was going to have to happen. Dave and I load into the back of the truck and we take off. Getting across the creek with no bridge was a challenge but Pa and Kent were able to navigate us through and we were off and on our way to tend to my injuries cutting more than an hour off of my misery.
Here comes the more stupid part than climbing the cliff. How nice it was that Pa had given us a short cut to get me feeling better quicker, right. Yes. I negated that effort by doing what began a long string of stupid ideas Dave would suggest and I would attempt in my life. At this time Dave and I noticed a big box of Triscuits sitting left over from lunch in the back with us. Brilliant Dave, now an Ear Nose and Throat MD, suggests, "Danny, I dare you to put a Triscuit on your wound." You would think that some mental alarm would have said to me, "hold on, could this hurt you?" No such alarm came and I pulled out a Triscuit glanced at the coarse edges and salt granules barely clinging to the wafer, and slapped that bad boy right onto my already throbbing flesh wound. The pain intensified from bearable to what felt like dipping my kidney into liquid magma. I lost it screaming like crazy, Dave is about to pass out laughing and Pa and Kent bob down the dirt road oblivious to my nightmare.
The pain subsided as Dave and I gained our composure. My tears of pain vs. his tears of laughter. You would think this lesson would have taught me to never trust or take a dare from Dave. Well It didn't. I have plenty more stories waiting to be told. But I'll never forget the day I consciously placed a Triscuit on my blood weeping laceration at Cabin Creek one summer. I think I caught some fish too!
Twenty Years Later the Scar Still Stands. Hard to see in this picture but still visible in person.
