Close Call

Wow, what a night !!!   (scroll down past the pictures to continue reading about it)

Click on any of the pictures to enlarge them...

Catching Capelin...



Brittney on the beach...



Roasting Hot Dogs


On The Beach.....




The crowd watching the Capelin...



Catching Capelin...





I caught one!!


Capelin on the beach....


What's left of the chair I'd been sitting in moments before the rock hit it






Our homeschooling group was going to Middle Cove Beach yesterday for a beach fire/cookout....It's a huge beach on the ocean (there is a little sand but mostly smooth small rocks cover the beach area) and it's surrounded by huge, high cliffs. People go there to have beach fires ---- it's a really neat place to hang out.
Here is a picture of the beach showing the high cliffs.

The Capelin (small fish) come in this time of year and people literally scoop them up with their hands, plastic bags, buckets....anything they can find....the fish are really plentiful.

We had our four chairs lined up side by side, in front of the cliffs.  Now, for some time, I had wanted to talk to a certain hs'ng mom and she happened to be there this evening. Great I thought, finally I'd be able to talk to her.   Larry and the kids were off with the others, but thanks to ME/CFS, I was limited to staying put in my chair.  I didn't even have the energy to get up and go over to where the mom was sitting, even though she was only a few feet away.  As I sat there for quite awhile, trying to muster up the energy to get over to her, a thought of, "now is the time" came into my head.   With great difficulty, I dragged myself out of the chair and started to head over to where she was sitting.  I'd barely gotten to where she was, when all of a sudden there was a LOUD crash.  I looked up and back to see a person climbing up the huge high cliff and in the process had knocked off a loose, rather large rock....probably 10 -12 inches in diameter.  It landed squarely on the lawn chair I'd been sitting in (didn't touch the others, didn't even cause them to move at all). It was one of those webbed aluminum chairs and the aluminum frame was snapped --- the back legs were completely snapped off (broken into two pieces, the frame was snapped in another place and the whole chair was buckled on the ground.  None of the other chairs had been touched....only the one I'd been sitting in just seconds prior).  (See above for a couple of pictures of the broken chair).

I was shaking  as I started to think through what would have happened if I'd been still sitting in that chair.....the rock would have hit me square on top of the head.  It totally destroyed the chair -- what would it have done to me?  It was one of those events that takes several minutes to totally wrap your ahead around -- what had just happened, what could have happened had I stayed in that chair and to fully grasp just how fortunate I was to get out the way with literally seconds to spare.  Having the extreme brain fog that goes along with ME/CFS made the whole thinking process even more difficult.

As I was thinking through this, all the others from our hs'ng group were down at the ocean's edge catching capelin.  All of a sudden, a shrill scream came out of nowhere from another hs'ng mom.   She was frantically calling my name and I could tell by her tone it was more than an invitation to do lunch some time.  As I moved toward her, I saw Jake...soaking wet, screaming and shaking with fear.  As I approached them, the story unfolded.  He'd been catching capelin with the rest of the group (moms, dads and kids) when he noticed Brittney's sandal floating in the ocean.  He reached out to grab it at the same time a wave came in, knocking him off of his feet out into the ocean.  Now, for my mainland friends, ocean waves are *much* different than any lake waves (even different than waves of the Great Lakes).... much different.  It does not take a lot to be swept away.  Thankfully, one of the dads (who had been standing right beside Jake) was able to reach him.  He grabbed Jake from underneath the water, pulling him out of the water and onto the shore.

To have once of these events happen was frightening enough, but both of them in the same night, within minutes of each other (while battling the effects of ME/CFS), extremely upsetting and mind boggling.   Both were much too close of a call for my liking. I'm very thankful today for the thought and the energy to move before the rock came crashing down as well as for the quick action of the hs'ng dad to grab Jake.  God was certainly with us that night.