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 40th 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 Continue reading “Almost Inspiring”