Ever think a Guardian Angel or someone is looking out for you?
There’s really no other explanation for what happened Saturday afternoon.
Sitting under the four-wheeler shed, I mentioned to Uncle Bill that my winch on my four-wheeler wasn’t working right. Sometimes it was fine. Sometimes it wouldn’t work at all. He took off the seat of my ATV and finagled with the fuse for a couple minutes. Bam! Winch worked like a charm.
Now, I don’t have much use for my winch. I’m not a TV commercial ATV guy. I don’t try to drive through the White River for the heck of it. I seldom have to put the thing in four-wheel drive. I like to stay on terra firma, lest I have to wash the thing more often than necessary.
But for some reason Saturday afternoon, when I got to the stand I had decided to hunt, I just didn’t have a good feeling about it. I figured I could do no worse if I scouted out a place along the edge of a cutover.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
That’s how I came to find myself riding through a piece of our lease with which I was not familiar. Came to a little creek. Couldn’t have been four feet across. My Suzuki Vinson 500, big, bad lookin’ thing that it is, could take that creek every day of the week and twice on Sunday. I had no doubt.
Except that we got four inches of rain the previous night that I wasn’t taking into consideration. The creek that should have been a foot deep was closer to 3 feet deep.
I know that’s how deep it was because the water came up to my hips when I had to climb off my metal steed.
The escapade began with me confidently bailing off into the roiling gorge. When the waves starting crashing over the headlights, I suspected there was about to be a problem.
Cold water pounded me in the face as the four-wheeler bounded down a 60-degree angle and then failed to climb the same angle on the other side of the brook-turned-raging water churner.
So, there I was, clinging to the handlebars, doing my best to not fall off into the creek.
No choice but to step off into the water, get up on the other side of the creek and figure a way out.
No doubt that the winch would play a major role. Luckily, I had kept on the front rack a strap with which I tie down the ATV in the bed of the truck. I tied the strap to the winch cable and finally pulled out on the other side of the creek.
If I hadn’t had that winch, I’d still be in that canyon. There was no way out without it. Uncle Bill was my favorite person in the world at that moment, but my wet journey was not yet complete.
What now?
Looking at the thickets in front of me, I had no choice but to go back the way I came.
Surely, I could get a running start, gun it and get out, right?
Um, no.
Same thing on the other side.
Winch. Strap. Winch. Strap.
Finally, on solid ground.
Now, where was I?
No idea.
By that time, I’d forgotten how I came to be where I was.
Went this way a while. No good. Nothing looked familiar.
Go back that way. OK, finally, a trail. Kinda.
Hate pine limbs.
Finally, familiar territory.
So, to sum, no hunting at all that afternoon, just more than a bit of effort trying not to fall completely off into a stupid creek that I had no business trying to cross in the first place.
There’s a lesson or three in there somewhere.
One, if you make a decision. Stick with it.
Two, understand that your experience with ATVs might be different than that of the folks in the advertisements.
Three, keep an uncle around who can fix a winch.
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Rick Fahr is publisher of the Log Cabin Democrat in Conway. His e-mail is rick.fahr@thecabin.net.