I Fell In to a Burning Ring of Fire

Brian Head is on fire. That’s the big news out of Cedar City right now. My dad has posted several updates from news media on his Facebook page for anyone that is interested in the details. My brother John was down this week, and he said it’s really bad—like the-whole-mountain-is-pretty-much-destroyed bad. According to Channel 2 News out of Salt Lake City, the fire has consumed over 60,000 acres (the 4th largest fire in 15 years) and is, as of the date I’m writing this, now 60% contained. 

I saw another story, on the website for the Fox affiliate in Salt Lake, about some kids who made 40 gallons of lemonade for the firefighters. It’s 112 in Vegas today, and I feel like I could put down a gallon of lemonade myself. I imagine it was like nectar of the gods to those firefighters.

According to Wikipedia, Brian Head is home to the town with the second highest elevation in the United States—9800’ above sea level. It’s a little resort town at the top of a mountain, sprinkled with cabins and other ski-resort-town amenities. Wikipedia also reported (and I love this) that the “population was 83 at the 2010 census, a significant decrease from the 2000 figure of 118.” A “significant decrease.” Awesome.

I feel for those 83 people, but they should have known better.

My more astute readers will remember that six years ago Clorinda and I had the scare of our married lives when Clayton got to spend 4 days in the hospital. Those of you that haven’t been paying close attention can get up to speed here. Regardless, at the end of the 4 days, the doctor cleared Clayton to go to “camp” with his young men’s group from church.

You know, camp. Where you stay in someone’s ginormous cabin at a mountain resort and spend your days mountain biking and your nights in the pool and spa at the clubhouse. Camp.

Clayton’s camp was supposed to end on Saturday morning, which also happened to be July 2. (Six years ago today (well, by the calendar it's tomorrow, but who's counting?).) You know what that means, of course—LONG WEEKEND!! (courtesy of Thomas Jefferson, et al.).  Clorinda and I decided to spend the whole next week, in Utah visiting family and enjoying the respite from the Vegas heat. (It regularly gets into the 90s in Utah during the summer, even the occasional triple-digits, but that is considered a relief from the fiery pits of Las Vegas. Having lived here for over twenty years, I don’t even fear hell anymore.) But the boys were driving back to Vegas that day, and it seemed counter-intuitive to have Clayton come ALL the way back to Vegas just to turn right around and drive back up to Utah.

Solution: Dad gets to drive up a day early, “camp” with the boys, and then meet up with mom and the girls mid-day in Cedar City. What could go wrong?

“Camping” was great. I got there in time for dinner, which I have absolutely no memory of. Delicious. After dinner we went to the clubhouse, which included a HUGE pool/hot-tub area and two (2!) saunas. I spent way too much time in the sauna (it felt like spring (again, Vegas)), and then got to sleep, er, camp, in a queen size bed with something like 30 pillows. Little did I know that the mountain was plotting against me getting another decent night's sleep for a long, long time.

The next morning we got the boys all packed up, and I uttered words that have haunted me ever since. “Hey, since we’re here, I’d like to take just. one. ride.” Two of the YM leaders, Dan and Cody, grabbed their bikes, I took Clayton’s bike, and off we went to the top of the mountain. Dan and Cody had been there all week with the boys and knew the ins-and-outs of the trails, and they (certainly taking note of my nearly 40-year old lawyer/dad bod) decided on what was supposed to be a rather easy trail. We started off down the path, coasting mostly but occasionally having to pedal. Several minutes in we came to a point where a tree had fallen across the trail, and they took a sharp right through a meadow. Nothing bad—a pretty good slope initially, then across a small stream and then down a more gradual slope at an angle. Dan was out front, and Cody was probably 10 yards behind him. I was another 10-15 yards back from Cody, just enjoying the ride.

It was gorgeous. We were literally almost 2 miles above sea level, cruising down a mountain on bikes on a cool Saturday morning in July. Snow still hung tightly to spots that were shaded from the daytime sun. The green trees and grasses struck a beautiful contrast to the blue sky, and it seemed that if you stood up on the pedals you could see right over the edge of the peak. There was nothing between us and the sky.

And just like that there was nothing between me and the ground. Well, nothing but that same blue sky.

They say that everything slows down before you die. I’m curious how anyone knows this. I was a sociology major in college (motto: let’s all work at the Gap!), so I know a thing or two about surveys and research methods, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how you gather data from people who are DEAD about whether everything slowed down for them RIGHT BEFORE THEY DIED. Paranormal Sociology. THAT is what I should have studied.

Nonetheless, I found myself soaring above the ground, headed for certain DEATH because EVERYTHING WAS SLOWING DOWN!

“This may not have been the best idea I’ve ever had. How did I end up OVER the handlebars? Look at that dirt down there—it looks…”

It was about that moment that my musings were rudely interrupted by Brian Q. Head. The face hit first. Actually, I think my left hand and face hit about the same time (it seemed important to me to get my hands up to try to soften the blow) and I dragged through the gravel and dirt and rocks and grasses. My right shoulder slammed into the ground, and the many sins of my past (read: repeated trips to cheap casinos for prime rib specials at 11:00 at night—curse you Las Vegas) conspired to give me a refresher on Newton’s laws of motion. And probably some other physics lessons that I didn’t study in my sociology of violent death course.

I let out a weak groan. Truth be told, I didn’t have a choice. The mountain knocked the groan out of me. When the gravel finally succeeded in stopping my body (see Newton’s First Law of Motion), I stared down the hill and could just see Dan and Cody. They had reached the bottom of the hill and come to a stop near a grove of trees to check behind them. I’m not sure whether it was the heap of mangled flesh and bones or the bike still tumbling through the meadow that cued them there was a problem, but to their credit, they didn’t just leave me there. I couldn’t move anything, but I could see them running back up the hill. (It was like the opening scene of Baywatch, but with fully clothed men running up the side of a mountain instead scantily clad lifeguards jogging on the beach.)

I’m pretty sure Cody thought I was dead, which made two of us. They managed to get me straightened out and turned around and over onto my back, so I was face up, head up. My left hand was swelling up like Thunder when he sees that Lo Pan has been killed, so I asked Cody to take off my wedding band. Dan took off to get help (Cody did NOT want to get back on the bike after seeing how the mountain had abused me), and Cody and I waited. To say I hurt is an understatement. Brian is a big dude, and his cranium is solid rock (literally). He put a beating on my like I’ve never experienced before or since. I. Hurt. Everywhere.

Dan got back a short while later with a couple of other guys. They fashioned a sling for my right arm and helped me to my feet. Jared grabbed me on my left side and Si’itupe grabbed me by my belt and nearly tossed me down the mountain (that is one big Samoan).

Can I just say how much I appreciate all of those guys? True bone-deep gratitude for each one of them. Healthy bond-deep, even.

When we got back to the cabin, Clayton’s first question when he was told that his father—his own flesh-and-blood, life-giving father—had just endured a near death experience on the side of the mountain, was “how’s my bike?” Priorities of a twelve-year-old, huh?

Having raised three kids I’ve spent time in emergency rooms. I am not a fan, so I was particularly surprised when we got to the ER in Cedar City and … wait for it … there was NOBODY there. I was it. The lone patient. OK, that’s not true. They had some people that were being treated in the ER, but there was NOBODY waiting. They got me back almost immediately, where I learned that I had broken my right humerus (NOT FUNNY!) at the shoulder and two bones in my left hand.

Me in the ER in Cedar City. Photo credit: John Fontano

When you are employed as an attorney, it is not convenient to have NO USE of EITHER ARM! It’s very difficult to type (I eventually became proficient with my thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger on my left hand), and Clorinda (for some reason) didn’t want to let me drive. My right arm was strapped to my chest. I had to sleep on my back, which meant a lot of nights out on the recliner in the family room. I won’t even begin to get in to the personals except to say that Clorinda has secured her spot in heaven (this was my twin nephews’ (then almost 7 years old) favorite thing about the accident). I couldn’t feed myself, and my angel wife sees meal time as a social event, so I often resembled a baby bird, mouth wide open begging for food while she chatted away with someone else, oblivious to my plight.

To top it off, the pain meds made me itch. Everywhere. Constantly. And I had NO USE of my arms and hands.

I did have a hearing that I couldn’t get out of about 2 weeks later. I looked like Chevy Chase in Spies Like Us—one arm in a cast, the other in a sling, face covered in road (mountain?) rash. I was local counsel and had co-counsel from Seattle there, our first face-to-face meeting. Classy.

That was not the best independence day weekend of my life. Oh, I’ve recovered, for the most part. My wedding band does not fit on my left hand anymore, and I don’t have full range of motion in my right arm, but they are otherwise fine. And I have only ridden a bike one time since the accident, and that was a road bike on flat ground. I have panic attacks on high places, like rooftops. And stairs. But it's all good.

It's been six years. I really thought I’d forgiven that mountain for what it did to me, but when John said the mountain was pretty much destroyed, all I could think was that karma is a, well, you know the rest.

I think I need a glass of lemonade.

You Are My Sunshine

I was woefully unprepared for law school. In fact, I hadn’t really planned on attending law school at all, but one night several during my senior year of college Clorinda suggested that maybe I ought to consider having a back-up plan to my then-current plan (which was something along the lines of: “I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.”) As luck would have it, Law and Order was playing on the TV, and being inspired by the TV gods, I said, “I’ll go to law school.”

Clorinda pointed out that I needed to take the LSAT (what’s the LSAT?) and so I should sign up, like right that moment. I did.

I took the test in early December at BYU. When I walked in, there were lots of smart looking folk that were putting off crazy levels of anxiety. The guy next to me had six pencils lined up, plus a sharpener and two (2!) little alarm clocks. He asked if it was my first time testing (of course—you mean people take it more than once? Why?!). He explained that he had taken it earlier that year, but had self-selected to void the test (an option available if you think you’ve bombed it and don’t want the results). Having been a poor married college student, I’m not sure if I was more baffled that he would take a test and not get the score, or PAY for a test and then take the test and not get the score.

As luck would have it, I DIDN’T feel compelled to void my test, made it through with my one pencil, and scored well enough to get admitted to law school at BYU.

My first year was an interesting one. First year law students generally all take the same courses—Civil procedure (it only took me 3 months to realize that Civil Procedure referred to the procedures for civil practice. Yeah, I was quick), Property, Contracts, Torts, Criminal Law, Constitutional Law, and a class that BYU called Advocacy. Other schools call it different things, but it was essentially legal writing and research. The second semester at BYU we had to choose one other class out of four. My choice was a jurisprudence course that was a legal theory/philosophy lecture.

Professor Cole Durham may be the most ivory-tower of any professor I have ever had. The guy’s discussions were so far over my head that I spent my time in class just hoping that he would say something, anything, that would make enough sense for me to write in my notes. It was much more a lecture than a participation class. Well, maybe that was just for me. I had nothing to offer. (I felt like I did in my junior year (HS) English class when we read Winter Dreams by F Scott Fitzgerald. My teacher explained how character names often have double meanings. He asked about why Fitzgerald named the main protagonist “Dexter Green.” My offering: because he’s playing golf and you have greens in golf. Let’s just say that wasn’t my strongest grade.)

As luck would have it, Professor Durham’s entire grade rested on one paper, due at the end of the semester. He encouraged us to work on the paper throughout the semester, but I had a long list of substantive classes that demanded my attention. So the paper got kicked down the road.

As the semester was coming to close, Professor Durham informed us that he would be out of the country for several weeks at the end of the semester. In an act of absolute benevolence, he gave us until the Monday after write-on to turn in our papers. Write-on took four days after the end of finals, so the end of my semester looked like this: 2 weeks of finals, then four days of write-on, leaving me Friday through Monday to finish the paper. (I suppose I should define write-on. Law Review is the premier legal journal at the law school, and so it’s the happening place to be. Employers dig that stuff, apparently. Write-on is essentially a writing contest to be selected for law review or one of the other journals.)

I made it through finals, plowed through write-on (and ultimately got selected to be on law review, btw), and finally decided to start work on a twenty-page paper due just three days later. I worked, nay, slaved for two solid days devising a topic, researching it, gathering information, and writing an initial draft of the paper. Or at least the first 16 pages of a paper. By the time Saturday evening came, I was exhausted and determined that I could come in on Monday, write the last four pages, proof-read and edit it, and hand it in. I locked up my laptop and research and everything in my desk at the school and headed home, hoping for a true day of rest after 3 solid weeks of law school insanity.

(I need to share some back-story. Nine months prior to this weekend, I had graduated with a degree in Sociology (motto: Old Navy, Here We Come!) and was gearing up to start law school. At the risk of sharing MTMI, we celebrated graduation. And that’s all I have to say about that right now.)

Sunday provided a much needed rest. Clorinda’s extended family had a big dinner up in Salt Lake, and we went and enjoyed visiting with lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. We got back to Provo around 9:30 or 10:00 and started getting ready for bed. With reference to the back-story above, Clorinda announced that “this baby is coming tonight!”

“Wait, what? You’re PREGNANT?!” I guess I hadn’t paid her much attention during law school and hadn’t noticed the weight gain. Husband of the year.

OK, strike that paragraph. My real response was “Oh no she is NOT. I have a PAPER DUE TOMORROW!”

Guess who won that argument (hint: it WAS NOT ME).

I decided I’d better finish the paper, but I had a really big problem. This was long before Dropbox, long before thumb drives, and (as noted above), ALL of my work was locked in a desk in the law school library. And it was 10:00 at night. And my VERY pregnant wife was in labor.

I started typing. I don’t have a clue what I wrote, I just wrote. And wrote. And fabricated whatever literary tripe I could to get the last four pages done. I emailed the paper to myself and then went to bed.

At seven AM the next day I was at the law school. Thankfully, the labor was not progressing rapidly (don’t tell Clorinda I was glad that her labor was dragging out. That’s not a sensitive thought. Husband of the year!) The law school was … wait for it … locked. Shut. Tight. Like, nobody home. School is OUT and we are NOT COMING TO WORK.

Except for the janitors! Hooray for the janitors! One heard me banging on the door and came to tell me that the law school was on Summer hours and wouldn’t be open for at least two more hours.

Yeah, that’s not going to work. You see, MY WIFE IS IN LABOR and I HAVE A PAPER THAT IS DUE TODAY so I AM COMING IN, OK?

This janitor was no dummy. He probably saw the absolute terror in my eyes—facing my wife because I missed the delivery of my child OR facing my wife because I’d failed out of law school. Cue Darth Vader: NOOOOOOOOOO!! He let me in! What a guy! I raced to me desk, pulled up my email, cut and pasted the tripe to the end of the sixteen pages, checked my formatting, printed the paper, ran it to the professor’s office and then headed home to take Clorinda to the hospital.

That was sixteen years ago today. That day, Clorinda gave me my third child and second little girl. When the nurses handed her to me, I was overcome with an instant love for that little, perfect bundle of sunshine. I held her and sang “You Are My Sunshine” to her. She was a little doll, and I was smitten.

Marien and Clayton took to her, too. According to the birth announcement, Marien said that “Our baby is so cute” and Clayton added “She’s cute.” So three of the four of us thought she was cute. Clorinda was still too exhausted from the delivery to weigh in, but she didn’t use any of my dad’s favorite lines (i.e., “what a treasure, let’s bury it”), so we assumed that Clorinda liked her too.

Just a couple months ago that little girl played the lead in a production of Thoroughly Modern Millie. Although she’d been sick—like hacking and wheezing and aching sick—for a week before the performances, she pushed forward and absolutely killed the performance. She has a flair for the dramatic and can sing like a bird. (We’re not entirely sure where the singing came from. I can’t sing to save my life, and although Clorinda can hold her own, she’s not winning a spot on the Voice anytime soon. Maybe the outtakes from American Idol, but not the Voice. Kathryn, on the other hand, could win the Voice. The judges will just have to come sit in my family room while she showers--her music fills the whole house!)

I can’t believe that my baby is sixteen. Last night she had a little panic attack. She wasn’t ready to be 16 (which is moderately ironic, since she’s been going on 18 for a good 7 years). We talked it through, and today she’s seized it. I just love her.

Happy Birthday little Kathryn. You are still my sunshine.