You’ve heard of your life flashing before your eyes in its final moments. I had something like that happen in a tree recently. Thankfully, it wasn’t my final moment. Which you probably guessed since I’m writing this.
That phenomenon was in the news lately. Scientists were doing brain scans of an 87-year-old Canadian man as part of a research project. By a coincidence, one that was fortunate for the scientists and not so much for the man, fate chose then for him to have a heart attack and die.
In the seconds before and after the man’s heart stopped beating, scans showed rapidly increased activity in parts of the brain associated with memory and dreaming. Scientists were intrigued by the presence of gamma waves. Those suggest the man’s brain may have been replaying memories from throughout his life.
While I’m not sure about my final moment, I can attest that our brains can riff through a lot of thoughts in a short time. And there might be a correlation with how far above the ground you are. I researched that myself.
Late winter is time to prune apple trees. Last week I headed to the orchard with saw and loppers in one arm and ladder in the other. It was a warmish day with snow piles receding.
I raise trees the way I raised kids: slightly out of control and unkempt. Once a year I try to bring some order to the branches. Branches that I can reach from the ground are preferred. A ladder gets me to another set. Then there are some that are too high.
I was reaching for one of those near the top of the ladder. Right then, I realized the ladder was going to tip over on some soft ground at a slight incline where I had thoughtlessly parked it. Going down with the ladder isn’t as noble as going down with the ship. My only other option was to stay where I was. So I grabbed the branch I was leaning over.
When the ladder got to where it was going, I was left hanging. Literally. It was then that my brain kicked into a higher gear. I quickly surmised that I didn’t like my situation. My life didn’t flash before my eyes. A couple of days I’m trying to forget maybe, but that doesn’t count.
I remembered something like this happened to Wile E. Coyote once that did not end well for Wile E. I imagined Road Runner smirking up at me.
If I was young and nimble, I would have flung the rest of me on to that branch and found a way to shimmy down the trunk of the tree. I’m not young and never was nimble.
Pam was in the house a few hundred feet away. If I started yelling, there was a chance she would hear and come out and set the ladder back up for me to safely descend to the ground, no worse for the wear.
There were two problems with that plan. Screaming frantically is so unbecoming, downright embarrassing. A man wants to maintain some dignity, even if he is dangling from a tree. The other problem is that if Pam did hear and came outside, she would jump to all sorts of conclusions about my decision-making abilities. Besides, did I really want to talk to Pam right then?
Then I realized I was visible from the highway. If someone happened to be looking toward our yard, they might see me clinging to that branch. Perhaps they would drive in the driveway and calmly set the ladder up. Or they might panic and call 911. That would be followed by emergency vehicles racing here from town. As their sirens blared into our yard, Pam would have noticed, with all those concerns I previously listed.
What if my buddy and intrepid reporter Fritz Busch happened to be on his way to cover a breaking news story in Cobden? If Fritz saw me suspended in air, he would have no doubt come to my aid. But being an intrepid reporter, he would have wanted to first get a picture. As much as I like having a column on page four of The Journal, I cringed at the idea of being on the front page. Again, it would have been easy to see a photo of my predicament and jump to all sorts of conclusions. Like that I’m not very smart.
Being a believer, prayer crossed my mind. God could plainly see the mess I was in. I wondered if God sees humor in the crazy things people do. Maybe grin and shake His head in a God sort of way?
The old joke came to mind where a man falls over a cliff and is hanging on a limb. He yells out for God. God answers in a thundering voice, “Do you trust me?”
The man says, “Yes Lord, I do.”
God instructs him to let go of the branch. The man looks up to heaven and says, “Is anyone else up there?”
I thought of my friend Scott. Scott is a Safety Coordinator by trade and would have had a thing or two to say to me right then. When I told him once about almost falling off a bin, he informed me about the three points of contact rule. That says at any moment in a climb, three of your hands and feet should be affixed. I have tried to follow that. In my moment of distress, I clearly had only two points of contact.
A few years ago, I sent a picture to Scott of my extension ladder in a loader bucket which I was going to use to replace a yard light. He was not impressed. I believe he still uses that as part of his Safety Training class.
By now, it was occurring to me that I had one option left, a bad one. I let go of the branch and fell to the ground, landing with a thud and a roll. I’ve been limping around with a sore knee since, but it could have been worse. I didn’t need to break anything this close to spring planting.
A few days later, I told Scott my story. Scott pointed out that March is National Ladder Safety Month. Oh, the irony. Consider this my contribution to that: Don’t do this.