Rabbit Box Blog

Stanley High School ceased to exist in the early 1970s, soon after I graduated in 1969. In recent years, some other alums have organized an annual combined reunion. Anyone who attended SHS is invited. I attended for the first time in 2023, and I saw a lot of old friends and classmates, many of whom I had not seen since high school days. 

One such person was Joe Luker. As we talked, I mentioned that I was writing a blog, and Joe immediately said he had a subject he would like me to write about. 

“I’d love to know what happened to you in Linville Gorge,” he said. When I expressed surprise, he added, “It would mean a lot to those of us who knew you back then.”

I promised I would put it on my blog, but it would take quite a while. I still didn’t know how to express what happened to me.

It’s now almost three years after Joe’s request. Unfortunately, Joe passed away in the intervening months. It occurs to me that he probably knows what happened better than I do, but a promise is a promise, and I’ve kept working on the project in spite of his passing. So, here’s my best memory of the events of October 1970.

* * * 

When Bernd Eiokotter stopped me on the stairs of the Admin Building at Belmont Abbey College in the fall of 1970, I was a little surprised. We had known each other all through high school, but we had not been especially close. We shared a few friends in common, but our interests were pretty different. Bernd’s father was German and came to Stanley to work in the Gaston County Dyeing Machine Company. I’m not sure if Bernd was born in Germany, but I always assumed he was. He spoke German and apparently could switch between English and German with equal ease. He marched to the sound of his own drum, as we used to say, and he could surprise you with a quick contempt for things we all held in unquestioned esteem. He was one of the cool kids, for sure. I considered him a friend, but I was always a little intimidated  by him.

“A few of us are going camping in the mountains. Would you like to come?”

The invitation caught me off guard. As much as I loved camping, I hesitated to take time off from work and study during my first few weeks at Belmont Abbey. All my classes were new, and many of my instructors were Benedictine monks. As a naive Southern Baptist whose only experience with the Catholic Church had been Bernd’s skeptical dismissal of most orthodoxy, I found the monks a little overpowering. When a monk who looked like Friar Tuck started teaching you about St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, it was hard not to think he knew them personally.

But fall was my favorite time for camping, and I needed a break. I asked a few questions about when and where, then signed on.

The trip was to be to Linville Gorge. I had never heard of the place, but Bernd said it was spectacular. I had no equipment suitable for a wilderness setting, but Bernd said we could borrow everything we needed from the Stanley Boy Scout troop.

And so it was that a few weeks later four of us loaded a couple of heavy wooden boxes full of canvas tents and other camping equipment into Steve Bumgardner’s station wagon and headed out for Linville Gorge.

Steve was another Stanley High School graduate, although he graduated the year before Bernd and me. He and I had been in several school clubs together, so I knew him fairly well.

The fourth member of our group was a fellow named Fred Birdsong. I had no idea who he was, and so concluded that he must be a friend of Steve’s. Fifty years later I found out that no one in the group knew him. He had overheard Bernd talking about the trip at Gaston County Dyeing, where they both worked, and had invited himself. Steve told me all those years later that he had assumed Fred was a friend of mine.

Fred was a little older than us, based on the Auburn University class ring he wore. He spent much of the trip to the mountains bragging about the Auburn football team, which had won the national championship in 1957. He claimed that many sports experts said the Auburn team could beat any NFL team that year. I think he even said the second team could beat NFL starters. Of course 1957 was long before our 1970 trip, so I don’t think any of us cared much.

You need a permit to camp inside Linville Gorge, and at least in those days, you had to get it at the Forest Service office in Marion, NC. I remember stopping there to get the permit, but I don’t remember much else about it. Seems as if it rained while we were there. We had lunch about then, but I’m not sure if it was in Marion or elsewhere. I remember we talked about the rain and how we hoped it stopped before we made camp.

Driving to Linville Gorge from Marion was a bit of an adventure back then. The roads were narrow and curvy, with lots of signs to “Watch for Falling Rock.” I already knew the joke about why those signs were posted all over the North Carolina mountains: Falling Rock was the name of a young Cherokee who went on a hunting trip to impress the father of Singing Deer, his true love. He never came back, so Singing Deer posted the signs to ask everyone to keep an eye out for him.

When we finally got to Linville Gorge, we parked in the parking lot where, years later, a visitor’s center was built. That building was destroyed by Helene in 2024. I can’t remember if there was any sort of structure there in 1970, but I don’t think there was.

As we unpacked the equipment, I kept looking for backpacks, but I never saw any. Apparently the Stanley Boy Scouts didn’t put any in the community supplies. Steve and Bernd grabbed the heavy wooden box that held the two canvas tents and most of our other camping items and started down the trail into the gorge. Fred and I carried the bags of food and other equipment.

The box was awkward to carry, and we switched off occasionally, but I remember Steve and Bernd carried it most of the time.

We stopped at the scenic overlook on the side of the gorge, and I got my first look at Linville Falls. The gorge really was spectacular, but I remember thinking the falls themselves were less impressive—somehow it seemed a gorge like that deserved a waterfall like Niagara. This one was split in two, and the halves were much shorter than I expected. Later I realized that the gorge was bigger than I imagined, and the waterfall was plenty large.

After taking in the view for a few minutes, we went back to the main trail and continued downward. At some point Steve and Bernd veered off the trail into the undergrowth. We “bushwhacked” the rest of the way down the steep sides of the gorge to the Linville River, fighting that wooden box all the way.

We scouted around for awhile before we found a relatively flat area that would hold our two tents. We pitched them with some difficulty— I believe we had to carve at least some tent pegs because there weren’t enough in the box. Finally, we had the tents up and organized our camp. Steve and Bernd were more experienced in Scout-style camping, so they took the lead while Fred and I tried to be helpful. I had brought the only knife I owned, an old Barlow folding knife Dad had given me years before when the smaller of the two blades had broken. I had managed to snap off the point of the remaining blade, leaving a blunt edge sticking outside the handle when it was folded. But the rest of the blade was still usable, and I kept it reasonably sharp.

I didn’t have any hiking boots, so I had worn my work shoes bought for my summers working in the textile mill. They were pretty heavy-duty shoes and worked pretty well, except for one thing—the soles were “oil-resistant” but not slip resistant. On rain soaked leaves and rocks, they didn’t offer great traction. I did have my favorite raincoat, which I had bought the year before in an Army surplus store. It was rubber coated canvas, and I still remember it as the best raincoat I’ve ever owned.

Fred was less well equipped than I was. He wore a t-shirt and jeans, and I don’t recall any sort of camping equipment. He did have his cigarettes and lighter, but not much else.

We all managed to bring some sort of sleeping bag or blanket. Maybe some dry socks, but we didn’t carry a lot of extra clothes.

When it came time to start a campfire, we looked around to find that everything was pretty wet, even though the rain had let up while we were hiking in. Somebody had a vague idea of hacking into a stick to get dry wood curls, and we had a hatchet in the camp supplies. Fred had his lighter, so he and Bernd started trying to get a fire going.

Steve and I decided to explore along the river while they worked. We all agreed that they could have a turn exploring once the fire was going, and Steve and I would work on cooking while they were gone.

Our campsite was relatively near the Lower Falls, so the sound of the waterfall upstream from our campsite was constant. Heading downstream, we followed the river bank for awhile, then found a trail that climbed slightly above the river. After about a half mile, the river and trail turned a right angle turn. The trail had by that point taken us 20 or 30 feet above the river, and seemed to be climbing higher the farther we went. We realized the afternoon was waning, but we decided to continue just a bit further. We might find an alternative trail back to camp, we told ourselves.

Soon the trail was getting a bit tougher, as it narrowed to a ledge overlooking the river. It came to a sharp corner, where we could see what I called a chimney in the canyon wall. I’m not sure why I came up with that word. The rock wall had a gap that was a rough rectangle when viewed from above, more like an elevator shaft that was open on one side, facing the river. 

Steve, who was leading, said he could see the trail continuing across the chimney. Maybe we could get across it and climb higher or lower to look for a better trail.

“Okay,” I said, not feeling eager either to keep going nor wanting to retrace the narrow ledge back the way we came.

Steve worked his way carefully around the right angle to enter the chimney, then said, “it’s not so bad. We can make this.” I edged along the narrow ledge towards the corner. As I reached for a new handhold, my hand touched a small tree growing out of the side of the rock wall. I didn’t think the tree would hold me, so I stopped and felt around for a better place to hold. As I worked along, at some point I realized I was no longer on the ledge. I wasn’t aware of my feet slipping or my support giving way — I just found myself off in the air.

There didn’t seem anything to do, but nothing seemed to be happening either. My mind was racing so fast that time seemed to stop, so much so that I became impatient. If I’m falling, I thought, let’s get on with it.

After what felt like minutes, I crashed onto the smooth ledge that pitched sharply into the river. The impact stunned me, as I landed on my feet and fell forward onto my hands. I felt myself slipping across the hard, smooth rock into the river, but I was unable to move enough to stop sliding. As I slid into the river, I realized that if I went into the water and didn’t recover enough to get my head up, I would drown without a fight. I felt the water cover my chin, and I knew I was about to die. The realization didn’t particularly upset me. I accepted it with surprising calm.

But then I stopped sliding. The water was up to my mouth, but at least I wasn’t moving any further. I could hold my head up enough to keep from drinking Linville River water, but I was still unable to move my legs or arms. My whole body seemed frozen.

I could hear Steve, still up on the ledge, say “Oh, no!”

He yelled down, “Are you okay?”

“No,” I yelled back. “I broke my body!” (Honestly, I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was something like that.)

Then, realizing how silly I must sound, I added, “And I’m not kidding!”

“Can you get out of the water?” Steve asked.

“No, I can’t move,” I answered.

Steve somehow managed to clamber down the rocks without falling. He grabbed my upper arms and pulled me out of the river. He placed me on my back on the bank, and we began to assess my injuries.

By now my body had somewhat recovered from the initial shock, and I could move, although not everything worked. My left leg was already nearly twice its normal size, and I couldn’t bend my knee. I could bend my other leg and my arms, but both hands were wracked with pain. I couldn’t grasp anything or put pressure on either hand.

I was bleeding from a cut on my lower abdomen, or upper thigh, depending on your vantage point. (The medical report later called it the ilium.) The broken blade of my knife had gouged a flap of skin and left a deep cut. The bleeding soon stopped, but the wound seemed threatening. It would bleed occasionally over the next day.

I had not hit my head or suffered any other significant injuries, so I began to think I was lucky. But when I tried to stand, it was clear that my leg was not in shape to do much walking. I couldn’t use a stick to help me, because I couldn’t grip anything in either hand. We were nearly a mile from camp, and the shadows were beginning to darken. The trail we had followed to get here was far above us, and there was no clear way to get up to it. Besides, I pointed out, what was above us was the ledge I had just fallen off of.

Steve debated going back to get Bernd and Fred to come and carry me to camp, but I objected. 

“It’ll be dark soon,” I said, “and we don’t want to risk you three getting hurt. I think I can walk, if you can help me. The leg won’t bend, but I can stand pressure on it.” The truth was that my pain was constant —it didn’t seem to matter whether I was walking or not. At least if we were walking I felt I was making progress towards eventual relief.

Steve agreed, and went off to find a path back that didn’t require climbing 30 feet up the mountainside to get to the trail we had left. Just about as soon as he was out of sight, it began to rain heavily. My raincoat, of course, was back at camp, nice and dry in the tent. Luckily the rain was fairly warm, especially for October. I actually found it a bit comforting. Soon Steve came back, saying we could travel along the river without having to climb.

So, with a lot of help from Steve, I dragged my rigid, swollen leg along the river bank toward camp. At some point, the original trail was low enough and wide enough that we could use it for easier progress. It was nearly dark when we found the tents and our camp mates, along with a campfire.

After we had told Bernd and Fred about how I had fallen and hurt myself, we started thinking about getting some help. It was already dusk, and our way out involved climbing through thick brush up the side of Linville Gorge. I couldn’t manage that, and the guys couldn’t safely carry me in the dark. We didn’t know how we’d get help even after we reached the top of the gorge, and no one remembered seeing a public phone near where we had parked. Steve, Bernd, and I agreed we would have to wait for morning. Fred had another idea. He stood up and announced he was going for help now. We tried to talk him out of it, but he was determined. He quickly left, reassuring me that he would be back with help before I knew it.

Steve and Bernd dug out our food and somehow found me some things I could eat without having to use my hands too much. Then they helped me into one of the tents, and I tried to find some relief from the pain in my leg and arms. Nobody had thought to bring any first aid supplies, but Bernd had brought a bottle of cheap wine. He gave me a small cup, and he and Steve sat near me and finished off the bottle. I wasn’t much of a drinker, but the wine did seem to help a little for at least awhile.

After an hour or so, we began to look for Fred to return with help. Would they come by helicopter? We had heard that helicopters were sometimes used for wilderness rescues. But, no, we concluded, the gorge was too narrow at this point and there were too many trees. But even so, Fred should have reached the top in just 30 minutes or so, and surely finding a ranger wouldn’t take too long.

But the evening dragged on, and there was no sign of Fred. Eventually I got sleepy enough that I was able to fall asleep even with my injuries. Steve stayed in the tent to keep an eye on me, while Bernd slept in the other tent. 

The sound of the Falls was at once soothing and disturbing—I could hear human voices in the noise. Was that a rescue party? No, it sounded more like children playing with an adult or two talking in the background. Could there be kids playing at the bottom of Linville Gorge in the middle of the night? I slept fitfully, waking frequently to listen to the sounds of voices in the falling water. It rained intermittently, adding another layer of sound.

At daylight, I woke up. Steve and Bernd were awake too, as I could hear them moving around outside. I called out to ask if Fred had come back.

“No,” they said. Their tone showed they were as concerned as I was. But surely Fred had spent the night in relative comfort while the rangers assembled a rescue party to climb down in the morning. They would be here soon.

But as time passed we were increasingly worried. Steve and Bernd started packing up our supplies, and we still saw no signs of anyone coming. They left the tents up and tried to pack as much of everything else as they could. Finally, they decided to go for help themselves. I was still in a great deal of pain but stable, and none of us wanted to risk one of them getting lost or hurt climbing up alone.

So they set off. I looked at my wristwatch and noticed a dent on the case. The second hand wasn’t moving.

“Oh, great,” I thought. “On top of everything else, I’ve broken my watch. That means I won’t have any idea of what time it is.”

I tried to keep calm and listened to the voices in the water. At times the adult voices overpowered the childish ones, and I thought a rescue party was near. Once I was positive I heard a family coming very near to camp. But no one appeared.

I looked at my watch again and still the second hand appeared stationary. But the time was later than it had been the last time I checked. Maybe I just didn’t remember the time that was showing when I first looked at it. Or maybe I was in that same time warp that made me take several minutes to start falling when I fell off the ledge.

Finally I heard voices coming very near. At last! These voices were real.

It was Steve and Bernd. They went to the other tent first, and I heard a thump and a groan. Fred had collapsed into the tent!

“What happened?” I asked Steve.

“We found Fred wandering around in the woods,” he said. “He got lost and spent a pretty rough night in the woods. Better let him sleep. We’re heading up again.”

And with that he and Bernd set off up the mountain.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced disappointment more deeply. At times I could hear Fred shifting positions or snoring softly in the other tent, but somehow those sounds made me feel even more alone. The voices in the water continued steadily, sometimes children, sometimes adults, sometimes both together.

After awhile, my suspicions arose. Why were all these people playing around me but no one was bothering to see about me? What if no one was coming to help? What if this had all been an elaborate scheme to get me into Linville Gorge and abandon me there?

I looked at my watch more and more frequently, wishing it was working. But as much as I stared at it, the second hand never moved.

After Fred had slept awhile, he woke up long enough to tell me that he had got lost soon after leaving camp. He got cold, so he used his lighter to start a small fire. He fell asleep and woke up to realize the back of his shirt was on fire. 

“I just rolled over on my back to put the fire out, then fell asleep again,” he said. I couldn’t help thinking Fred had had a worse night than I did. He was so exhausted he fell back asleep, and I was essentially alone again.

Hours went by. I could tell from the sun that it was now nearing mid-afternoon. I could hear voices, but by now I no longer expected anyone. I was alone and would remain so, perhaps forever.

But then a stranger’s face appeared in the tent opening. Then I heard Bernd and Steve talking to some other men. What happened next is not clear in my memory, but somehow I was loaded onto a stretcher. One of the rescuers talked about some of the new technology, like an inflatable cast. I can’t remember if he had some and used them or if he just wished he had some. But it didn’t matter much to me. I was being rescued!

I asked if they had seen the family that I had heard. They looked at each other and somebody said, “no, there’s nobody around here but us.”

“But I heard them,” I insisted. “They were talking and laughing, and sometimes I could feel vibrations in the ground from them jumping on the rocks.”

“The river does make some strange sounds, especially this close to the falls,” the rescuer said. “Sometimes it does sound like voices.”

I wasn’t convinced, but I didn’t argue.

Soon we started up the side of the gorge towards the nearest trail. It was tough going, with lots of underbrush and steep incline. The men carrying the stretcher struggled. They kidded me about being very heavy for my size. They joked that I must be pretty smart because my head weighed a lot more than the rest of me, making it hard to balance. They took turns on the stretcher, and I think Steve took a turn or two.

Eventually we reached the trail, making the travel easier. Soon we encountered a family on the trail, but they were heading down into the gorge, not up, so they couldn’t have been the source of my voices. A man stopped us, announcing he was a doctor. Was there anything he could do, he asked.

“This fellow’s in a great deal of pain,” said a rescuer. “We don’t have any medicine with us. Do you have something?”

“Yes, I’ve got my bag with me,” he said.

I felt a wave of relief, just thinking about something that might dull my pain a little.

“Have you had anything?” The doctor asked me, standing close by my stretcher to take a look at my injuries and my eyes.

“No,” I said. “Except a half-cup of wine, about 8 o’clock last night.” The doctor’s face clouded.

“Oh, then I couldn’t risk giving you anything.” He backed away reflexively.

“But it wasn’t much, and it was hours ago,” I said.  Steve agreed.

“No, I couldn’t take the chance,” the doctor said. “If anything happened, I’d be legally responsible.” (Good Samaritan laws were still years in the future.) He turned and rejoined his family as they continued down the trail.

So we resumed our climb up the side of the Gorge, and I settled back into my pain.

Soon we reached the parking lot at the top of the trail. As the men negotiated around the parked cars and curious onlookers, we were met by a ranger, who directed us to the “ambulance.”

In 1970, the era of the emergency medical services and big box ambulances was still in the future. Most ambulance services were run by funeral homes, and many ambulances were off-duty hearses. In this case, not even that was available, so my ride turned out to be the ranger’s station wagon. They loaded me in the back where even my less-than-average height barely fit. The ranger invited Steve to sit in the front, and we drove off.

As we left the parking lot, the ranger turned on the siren, an old mechanical model. As soon as we cleared the few cars on the road, he switched it off.

“It overheats if you run it too long,” he explained to Steve. They then engaged in several minutes of talk about the inner workings of sirens. The ranger turned the siren back on whenever we met a car, but then quickly turned it off again.

I started to relax a little. I was on the way to a hospital, and the ranger was comfortable enough about my condition to make small talk.

Soon we arrived at the local hospital—I don’t remember which little town it was in. As we drove around to the emergency entrance, I noted that it was very small, more like a medical clinic than a hospital.

I was loaded onto a gurney and taken to a large open room where a doctor evaluated my injuries. I believe I had some x-rays, but my memory is a little vague on that detail. The doctor eventually came and said I needed to be transferred to Asheville where I would need surgery on my knee, followed by weeks or months of recovery.

“Can’t I go home?” I asked. I explained that weeks or even days in Asheville would put a big financial and emotional strain on my family.

“Where’s home?” the doctor asked.

When I said Gaston County, he brightened. “The best orthopedic hospital in the state is in Gastonia,” he said. “If you can go there, that’s a better option.”

He arranged for me to call home to see what could be done. There were no fancy behind-the-scenes referral systems in place back then, so it was all up to the family. After a phone was brought to my gurney, I recited my number to someone who dialed it. Both of my hands were attached to painful arms, so I couldn’t dial for myself.

My brother Gary answered the phone.

“Hey, Gary,” I said. “I fell off a mountain. Let me talk to Mom.” (He reminded me of my brilliant conversation recently.)

When I had told Mom about my situation, she recovered from the shock pretty quickly.

“Betty Ann Abernathy knows every doctor in Gastonia,” she said. Betty Ann was our neighbor and Mom’s friend since high school. “She used to work in the business office of Garrison Hospital. Give me a few minutes to call her.” I told her the number she could call me back and hung up.

Within a surprisingly short time, Mom called back. Betty Ann had arranged for Dr. William Roberts, until recently the principal surgeon at the North Carolina Orthopedic Hospital in Gastonia, to see me. How she managed to do that so quickly on a Sunday is something I never knew. But it kept me from a miserable trip to Asheville.

At some point, I asked a staff member for the time. He saw my watch and reminded me I was wearing one.

“Yes, but it’s broken,” I replied. He told me it was after 4 p.m. I looked at my watch. It showed the correct time, and the second hand was moving normally.

“Well,” I said, “I guess they really do take a licking and keep on ticking,” quoting the Timex ads of the time. But I couldn’t understand how my watch could have been stopped all those times I saw the second hand not moving and still have the correct time.

After the doctor had confirmation that I could be transferred to Dr. Roberts and Gaston Memorial, I was quickly discharged for the trip. Luckily, Steve volunteered to take me there, saving the trauma and cost of medical transport.

So I was rolled out to Steve’s car for the trip back to Gaston County. Steve had somehow gathered Bernd and Fred. I was put in the back of Steve’s station wagon, and we drove down the curvy mountain roads (many of them have been improved in the years since) to the foothills and then to Gastonia. Steve took me to Gaston Memorial Hospital (the old one on Highland Street, not the one that became Caromont).

The details have blurred over the years, but Mom and Dad and I were soon inside getting me checked in. The admitting nurse explained that because I was 19, I would be placed in the children’s ward, which had eight beds. We protested, because I considered myself an adult and didn’t want to be thrown in with a bunch of sick children. I was essentially healthy, just injured. The nurse was adamant, and for awhile it seemed there was no alternative.

Betty Ann Abernathy came to my rescue again, although I don’t recall whether she was there in person or on the phone. Either way, she could be a powerful ally, and she got me into a semi-private room, although still in the children’s section.

My roommate was also in for a broken leg, although his had been shattered by a gunshot. When he found out I was a student at Belmont Abbey College, he asked me if I had seen the torture chamber they kept in the dungeon under the church. I had quite a time trying to convince him that the monks were not that kind of Catholics, although I don’t think he ever believed me.

Thanks to pain medication, I had a relatively restful night. In the morning I was taken out for several rounds of X-rays of my injured limbs. At some point, still in early morning, I was placed in a room that housed several rolling carts with trays of medical tools and supplies, none of which looked familiar. After a nurse brought in my x-rays and hung them near my gurney, she said the doctor would soon see me.

A little while later, I heard a cheerful whistled tune, and Dr. Roberts quickly entered the room. He greeted me, glanced at the x-rays, and grumbled at the nurse about getting the materials ready faster. She placed some rolls of gauze and a bowl of plaster of Paris on the cart next to me.

Dr. Roberts explained to me that my kneecap was about the size and shape of a biscuit. Mine was broken into four equal pieces, he explained, illustrating by breaking an imaginary biscuit in half, then turning it 90 degrees and breaking it again.

Suddenly he grabbed my knee in his two hands, and squeezed the kneecap tightly. At the same time he grouchily had the nurse hand him the gauze, which she had dipped into the plaster of Paris. He started wrapping my knee with the gauze while keeping the kneecap stationery.

“So who says you need surgery?” Dr. Roberts asked sarcastically, continuing to wrap my leg in plastery gauze.

Still shocked at the speed of treatment, I answered feebly, “that’s what they told me.”

“Nah, you’ll be fine,” he told me cheerily. “Eight to ten weeks in a cast and you’ll be fine. We should be able to take this big cast off and put on a smaller one in about six weeks.”

When he finished wrapping my leg from mid-thigh to toes, he switched his attention to my arm. “You’ve got eight small bones in your wrist,” he explained. Three of yours are broken,” he said. “We’ll need to put that arm in a cast for six weeks or so. The other arm is sprained, so it won’t need a cast, just an elastic bandage.

“But to tell you the truth, you’ll have more trouble out of the sprain than the break,” he said. For the record, he turned out to be correct. The sprained arm hurt off and on for years after.

After finishing up all the plastering and wrapping, Dr. Roberts turned to leave, then asked if I had any questions. I asked about the open wound on my ilium. He looked at the deep gouge, smoothed down the flap of skin so that it covered the wound, and told me it should heal without any stitches or other treatment.

Then, after snapping at the nurse one more time, he breezed out of the room, whistling happily. He was like two different personalities – tough on medical staff, yet very kind to patients.

I don’t remember how long I stayed in the hospital, but I do remember being visited by my supervisor at W.T. Grant and the store manager. The store manager praised my work in the men’s department and promised my job would be waiting for me when I recovered. 

“If they don’t take you back immediately,” he said, “ask for me by name.”  (In fact, they didn’t take me back, and I think he may have left the store in the meantime. The whole chain declared bankruptcy and shut down a short time later.)

My recovery was medically unremarkable but personally difficult. Because of my heavy casts, I was bed-ridden for weeks after I was sent home. Dad was able to carry me into the living room occasionally, but any vibration caused me great pain in my leg. The family declared me a hopeless grouch, and I spent most of my time in bed.

The people at Belmont Abbey College were as helpful as they could be, so I did not have to drop out. Some classes wouldn’t work without in-person attendance, so I dropped those. I was able to complete a few classes with work at home. I specifically remember History. Frank Murray, my professor, let me do an independent study on the Crusades. I think I also completed a required math course, but I’m not sure of the details.

I also remember a steady stream of visitors. My camping companions came by to check on me. Fred Birdsong came once. I apologized for my part in causing his ordeal. Even though I was the bed-ridden one, I felt guilty for what my accident had put Fred through.

“I always thought all the rough country was out West,” he said. “I guess you and I know that’s not true.” I never saw Fred after that visit. I’m not sure what happened to him.

As it turned out, my accident prevented one potentially embarrassing event. Betty Ann Abernathy’s daughter, Renee, was a year younger than I. She was legally blind, and apparently looked up to me as we grew up together. She brought a college friend to meet me, proudly announcing that she had planned to set us up on a blind date but that would have to wait until I recovered. She explained that her friend was over six feet tall and had trouble finding boys to date who were taller. So Renee thought of me. She didn’t realize that I am 5 feet 7 inches tall on a good day!

The girl was nice, and we had a pleasant visit. But Renee never mentioned the blind date again.

After six weeks, I returned to Dr. Roberts’ office to take off my leg cast. In those days, casts were removed with a small circular saw, which of course worried me considerably as Dr. Roberts expertly ran it down the length of the cast. It sounded a lot like Dad’s Skil saw as it ripped through plywood.

I hoped my knee had healed enough that I wouldn’t need any more treatment, but he concluded that I needed a smaller cast for the next month or so. I also had to keep the cast on my arm.

The new leg cast was smaller and lighter, although only slightly so, and I still couldn’t bend my knee. But I could move enough that I could walk a little with crutches. I still couldn’t fit into the driver’s seat of my car, so I couldn’t return to school yet. 

I was able to hobble into the church for my cousin’s wedding (Joyce Morris to Rick Manning). I made it through the service, but getting up to leave was very awkward. I recently saw a picture of the wedding party taken just after the ceremony. Everyone’s eyes are oddly skewed to their right. I think that’s about the time I stumbled noisily on my crutches. (Sorry, Joyce and Rick.)

Eventually, I did get all my casts off. My leg and arm were horribly emaciated after all those weeks of no movement, but I was released by the doctor and encouraged to exercise my limbs as much as possible. Physical therapy in those days was confined to people who were truly incapacitated.

• * * 

So, that’s what I remember of the events of my accident. But, now, what about the question Joe Luker asked me over 50 years later — what happened to you?

The short answer is, I don’t know. Or, more accurately, it’s not something I can put into words.

I returned to Linville Gorge several times in the months after I recovered enough to make the walk. Steve and Bernd went with me on at least two of those trips, and Joe Luker may have come along.  Each return visit felt like a pilgrimage, especially when they helped me revisit the spot where I had fallen.

We all went on a camping trip to the Outer Banks the next spring, and Joe and I talked a great deal about my experience. I told Joe it was the most spiritually significant event of my life. But even with the events fresh in my memory, I couldn’t quite explain why I felt that way.

I also tried several times to write about my experience and its significance, but I could never manage to capture anything that felt right. After a few years, I gave up, and I had not revisited the writing project until Joe and I talked at the Stanley High School reunion in 2023.

So, what did happen?

Remember that I was 19, not quite a child anymore, but not yet an adult. I had been brought up  in a small community that looking back, was fairly isolated from the larger society. More specifically, I had grown up in a church that taught its children to fear God. We were taught that He was always watching us, noting every thing we did wrong, or even when we failed to do what was required. (I don’t remember being reassured He gave credit for doing right.) When my friend Mike Payne was killed by a drunk driver when we were in the second grade, some of God’s scorekeepers, men of the church, were sure to seek me out at the funeral to tell me that Mike had not been “saved,” so he would be going to Hell. Sorry, but those are the rules.

My parents, who were quite devout Christians, viewed God as more loving, but they didn’t talk about religion much. When I asked him about Mike, Dad reassured me that God made exceptions for little children. I became skeptical that these cruel men were true spokesmen of God, but that’s the environment I grew up in. It made me feel as though God’s purpose in creating me was to watch me for any excuse to condemn me to Hell.  If God watched me so closely, I must constantly watch myself. One false move, and I would be joining Mike in eternal fire.

By the time I reached 19, I no longer literally believed that, but the thought of my precariousness in the universe, as well as my outsized responsibility in the scheme of things, persisted.

In Linville Gorge, I saw that the Universe was immensely bigger than I had ever imagined, and my importance in it was fleeting and small. Nature could kill me without even noticing. My perceptions were not reality. If my life ended, the Universe would continue as it always has.

God was not devoting His time to watching me, waiting for any act that could justify sending me to eternal damnation. I was, as someone put it, a tiny speck living on a speck in a small corner of the Universe.

Somehow, I found that idea liberating and comforting. The burden of constantly trying not to displease a vindictive God was suddenly gone. The image I had of that God was much too small.

After Linville Gorge, I found myself in an almost constant state of joy. Sunrises and sunsets were more vivid than they ever had been. Nature was vast and beautiful, more so than I had ever noticed. I could spend hours peering into the night sky, secure in the knowledge that the Universe was far bigger than I could see even on a clear night.

As the years have passed, I have learned that my experience is hardly unique. But others have found more effective ways to express it. For example, I was recently reminded of something Marcus Aurelius wrote around 170 CE:

More recently, The Atlantic published an essay by Arthur C. Brooks, “To Get Happier, Make Yourself Smaller.” (Accessed online November 20, 2025.)  In it, Brooks wrote:

So relax into the reality of your cosmic smallness. The plain truth is that you are a speck  

on a speck. But you’re a lovely little speck, and beloved by a few other specks. That’s

a good life.

It is, indeed, a good life.