Two friends, best friends, life long friends, loved spending time in the outdoors. Thier favorite pastime was to spend time in the woods, investigating every hill and valley, every spot of the woods. Thier most favorite place was the creek. The huge rocks that rose majestically out of the creek became perfect places to jump from, to use as whatever their imagination could conjure up. It was wonderful.
No matter what the weather, no matter the time of year, if you could not find the boys around the house, you could expect that when you call, they would come from the woods. They loved the outdoors and spending time together in the woods.
It was early spring, when the spring rains are abundant that the boys decided to take a hike in the woods. They had several special places, you know, the grape vine that went from hill to hill. Tarzan never looked as good as the those boys as they swang on that large grape vine.
There was the cave. It was so small that they boys could not fit into it but they did store an old lunch box in there with all their secret stuff that they did not anyone else to see.
There was the place they called the ski jump. It was simply a huge outcrop of rocks that dropped maybe three feet but is was a natural place for the leaves to gather so jumping into the great piles of leaves without any danger of hurting themselves.
The island was formed when the creek split around a small spot of land. It was so small that the two man pup tent that they boys had barely fit on the island but with an imagination it could become a deserted island in the South Pacific, or the place where Blackbeard buried his treasure.
They spent hours playing in the wood, numerous night coming out and sleeping in the pup tent. They rode their bikes through the woods, built forts of fallen trees, though the fort was usually only a couple of logs stacked on each other. They defended the Alamo, fought the British with general Washington, climbed iro Jemma with the Marines. They landed at Normandy, they fought pirates, fought off Indians, fought with the British in India nod with the French forgiven legion all,across the desert. They lived
Ike Tarzan and captured King Kong. They fought in the Roman legions, were as strong as Hercules, conquered the world with Alexander the Great. They sat around not the camp fire (just wood piled up, they were not allowed to have fire In the woods) and Drank their coffee ( chocolate milk from home) while they are stale bread (oreo’s from home stored in their backpack all Day in a plastic lunch bag). It was a boys paradise.
Now, the small creek ran into a larger creek across the corn field and they his time boys decided they wanted to see how much water was running in the “big creek” as they called it.
With the recent spring rains the creeks were both full. The small creek they normally played by was up and the big creek was way up thanks to the numerous other small cry weather creeks that dumped the runoff for the surrounding hills. The boys were fascinated with the amount of water flowing. They had never seen big creek so high.
While both boys were the same ages,one of the boys was was quite a bit bigger and stronger than the other. It never affected their friendship. Of course the smaller of the two was the bravest, or maybe we could say he was not the best at anticipating the consequence of what're was doing.
“Hey look” he shouted as he jumped into the water to land on the top of the only big rock that was showing above the rushing water.
Before his friends could yell not, the leap was made it the top of the rock was slippery from the water and his foot slipped and he was swept downstream in the swift moving water.
Without a moment's hesitation his bigger and stronger friends jumped into the water and began swimming towards his friend. He reached him and at that moment a huge piece of a long came floating by, broken loose by the flooding water. With one hand holding onto his smaller friend he grabbed the log. While it was huge, it could not float both of the boys. The bigger boy told his friend to hold on and to try to get to the bank by kicking but he was not to let go of the log.
The smaller young man kicked for all he was worth and eventually was able to get close enough to a bank to drag bottom and stand up. He scrambled up the bank and yelled to his friend, “I made it.”
Turning around he expected to find his friend right behind him but he was no where in sight. He yelled and yelled. It no answer came. He ran home screaming to his parents to help.
They found his friend the next day, downstream.
Years later an old man retired from his law practice. One of his grandkids asked him, “Grandpa,did you always want to be a lawyer?”
The grandfather eyes filled with tears. It had been the dream of his friend to someday become a Lawyer. Every since that day, his life had changed. He had purpose, he had a dream. He would become a lawyer.
You might think that was not the best thing for him to do but as he reflected over his career, nothing could have suited him better.
I have jumped into the water
2. I needed to be saved
3. I have found meaning and purpose in life
