We in the West call it Fate. Buddhists refer to it as Karma. Muslims accept it as Kismet. Anyway you define it, if I had gone on my hike on the day I had planned this would never have happened. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is an old saying, "Nature is Cruel". But this is not really true. Nature is indifferent. It does not care how good or bad you are, how young or old. It sits and waits for the unwary and unlucky and treats them all the same. In June of 1995 I visited Yosemite Park for the first time. I had come to attend the funeral of my friend John. John had quite a green thumb and was known for his home garden. He had traveled the world and lived his life fully but was not careful. Nature was waiting for him. He died at age forty of AIDS. We few had gathered to scatter his ashes in the park he had known and loved so well. Among this group were John's parents, Samuel, 80 and frail, and Martha, 78, strong and healthy but entering the first stage of alzheimer's. His younger brother, David, was also there. John's older sister Ann had been in remission from cancer but had followed him six weeks after his death. With John's friends, the group made an even dozen. I quickly grew close to these people, most of whom I'd never met and would never see again. We conducted our rituals and said our eulogies. John's parents bore their duel tragedies with much dignity. During our time together the weather, as if in tribute to John, had remained warm and mild under a cloudless blue sky. We were surrounded by new life. After two days it was time to go. Having made plans to spend the remainder of the week in the park, I said my good-byes and descended to the valley and Curry Camp Village. The next day was overcast and threatening but I was determined to hike up the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls. The falls were especially spectacular that year and the rivers were running fast and high due to the unusual amount of runoff from the winter snows. I started out with great enthusiasm and energy but soon noticed children racing by me along the trail. And then I noticed overweight women were passing me. And then old men with canes. After a half mile I stopped to rest and marveled at the amount of moisture in the air. It certainly was a misty trail! It was only later that I realized that it had started to rain. Catching my second wind, I soon reached the one-mile point on the trail and my first look at Vernal Falls, at a bridge over the Merced River. I stopped to take some pictures and then continued on the final half mile of my hike. About a quarter mile up from the bridge, however, was another viewing area. It was a giant granite outcropping that jutted into the river. As I stepped off the trail and onto the rock I noticed two people were there ahead of me. An elderly man was taking pictures with a small camcorder. He was a portly, rather pleasant looking man in baseball cap and blue windbreaker. Next to him was a younger, bearded man. As I stood there waiting, a woman walked up behind me to stand in the line. Finished, the old man carefully packed the camcorder into the pouch at his waist, took a step, and began to slide. I took a step forward, right arm outstretched, and shouted to the younger man, "Grab him!" It was too late. The old man's legs came out from under him and he pitched forward. There was a sickening "slap" as his head hit the wet granite. He rolled off the edge of the outcropping and was gone. Only God or physics prevented him from falling into the Merced. And as angry as it looked, that most surely would have been the end of him. The young man, the woman and I looked over the edge to the rocks ten feet below. And there he was, laying on his back, right leg bent under his left, arms spread wide, eyes open and turned back in his head. I turned to the woman and quietly said, "My God, I think he's dead." And just for a moment I had the impulse to jump down and be with him, to help in some way. But others were already swarming around him. One covered him with a coat. Another placed a backpack under his head. And, mercifully, as he came back from the edge and began to stir, others prevented him from trying to get up. I remembered the emergency telephone down at the bridge and set out to call for medical help. I was cold, tired, wet and hungry but the urgency of my mission made me forget all that. My frustration grew, though, at the seemingly endless questions the voice at the other end of the line kept asking. "There is a Ranger team in the area practicing search and rescue," he finally said. "They should be there in a few minutes, can you wait for them and show them where the accident occurred?" I reluctantly agreed. Sure enough, after a few minutes which seemed to last forever, two young men appeared near the telephone. They had come from the woods below walking straight up the hillside. One was carrying a stretcher and the other a large backpack filled with supplies. As we hiked back up the trail, I was relieved almost to tears when I saw the old man sitting at the side of the trail, surrounded by his rescuers, talking and laughing. The Rangers quickly placed a cervical collar around his neck and began treating a nasty gash over his left eye. The old man called out to the younger man who had been on the outcropping with us. It turned out they were father and son-in-law. "Hey Bob! You gotta get a picture of this!" He smiled and gave a thumbs up salute as the younger man snapped his picture. Then Bob turned to me and said, "Thanks for helping my father-in-law. I kept trying to get him off that rock but he can be pretty stubborn." He seems pretty tough, though," I replied, remembering the fall. "He is that," he laughed. We shook hands and I started back down the trail. Back at the bridge, I saw two women sitting at the side of the trail. The younger woman had her right arm around the older woman's shoulders. The older woman's arms were wrapped tightly around her own chest and she was rocking back and forth. Her hair was steel grey and her anguish had deepened the lines in her face making her look much older. Somehow, I knew. The old man's wife and daughter. I stopped and looked down at them. The older woman looked up and our eyes met. "He's with the Rangers now and it looks like he's going to be just fine," I said. Her face broke into the most beautiful smile and then she began to cry. "Thank you, thank you!" she managed to say through her tears. I smiled back and continued down the trail. The drizzle had given way to a light but steady rain. I was still wet and hungry but I now felt warm all over. And you know, I wasn't tired anymore. That night I called the Park Headquarters to find out how the old man was. They had taken him down to the town of Merced and given him a complete physical checkup. He had a concussion but with a few days rest he would be as good as new. Proving the old saying that "No good deed goes unpunished", the next two days it rained heavily, followed by snow on the third day. I never did get to the top of the Mist Trail and I missed lunch that day. But I did find a lesson from my visit to Yosemite in the words of a Hindu mystic, "Life is holy, celebrate it!" So go out and grab everything life has to offer. Live a full life as my friend John did. Do it all. Just watch your step.