Almost Inspiring

We spent two days canoeing the Buffalo National River last weekend.  We camped overnight in a semi-wilderness between the two days.  This river is absolutely beautiful place, if you ever get a chance to float it, you should jump at the opportunity.

While we were canoeing the first day we were lapped by two men.  The fellow in the back of the canoe had a prosthetic left arm that went almost to his shoulder.  I said lapped, what I really meant was that they blew by us.

We stopped later in the day to visit Hemmed-in Hollow waterfall.  It is advertised as the highest waterfalls between the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.   It was not flowing dramatically the day we were there, but seasonally probably it is quite impressive.

As Robin and I were sitting there admiring the fall and watching folks, our gentleman with the prosthetic arm came up.  He was with 3 companions, all in their thirties.  Many folks float rivers as a beer drinking exercise.  Such was the case with these four.  It was the one-arm gentleman’s 40^th birthday, and the float trip was in honor of that.

The fellow with the mechanical arm recognized us from the river and came up and introduced himself as Tim S.  One of his companions was standing there also.  Tim wanted to know what we thought about a one- armed man canoeing.  I mentioned how I use to know a fellow with two prosthetic legs who was a pretty decent golfer.  His friend mentioned that Tim golfed also.

At that point Tim launched into the story of how he had lost his arm.  His friend wandered off, probably having heard the story multiple times.  Most of the rest of our group came up at this point just in time to hear Tim’s story. Tim works for a pyrotechnic company that travels around the country putting on firework shows.   There was an accident at one show that resulted in the lost of his arm.  He spent nine months in the hospital recuperating.  Apparently his biggest fear was that he would not get his job back.  One of the fellows on the float trip was his boss at the pyrotechnic company who had assured him in the hospital that he would.  And he did.

He went on testify how losing his arm was the best thing that ever happened to him.  He worked with the doctors and the technicians in creating his new limb.  He thought that was an awe inspiring process.  He now does some work with children who have lost limbs or have other handicaps.  He said that has changed his life and his outlook.  However, he said that the best thing that happened to him was that he was married now and had two beautiful children, 4 and 5 years in age.  He went on to talk about how much better his life was now in other areas also.  I had a warm fuzzy in my heart considering how we humans so often can overcome adversity and prosper.

Tim said good-bye and walked towards that falls to rejoin his friends and co-workers.  The bottom of the falls is very rocky and not entirely covered in water.  Those areas that constantly receive splash are very mossy and slippery.  Tim walks into one of these areas, beer in hand, and immediately slips, twisting in time to land on his back.  We were all wincing, expecting the worst.  Tim says from the ground, “Wow, the view is so much better from down here!”  He gets up, walks a couple more steps and does the same dive again.  At that point, as a group, we decided that this was too painful to watch.  We started our hike back down to our canoes.

It was an inspiring story gone awry in a can of Coors.

So it goes.