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"We have a jet standing by if needed to airlift you to Denver," the doctor explained. We'll do another MRI, this time with an iodine dye solution to reveal any possible leakage from the artery. This is a life-threatening situation."

Meanwhile Janet, whom I had called from the ambulance, had scrambled to throw things together and begin the drive to Alamosa (4 hours from Evergreen) to be with me. Our Good Samaritan neighbor Mark insisted on going with her, a magnificent gift as it freed her to make phone calls and compose herself during that tense drive. They were about halfway to Alamosa when the doctor gave her this news via phone, explaining that if they found arterial leakage they could not hold the plane for her; I would be shipped immediately. You would have to use a cell phone in Colorado to understand some of the tension here: about every third word gets dropped and, in the mountains, the call cuts off every thirty seconds or so. Poor Janet was trying to decide whether to turn around and drive back to Denver or continue on to Alamosa, with the possibility of watching my jet contrails in the sky above her.

I went in for the iodine-dye scan, and then was left alone to wait for the transmission to Australia and the results. In all, I lay strapped onto that body board for seven hours. The emergency room was quite busy that day, mostly crying babies. I had plenty of time to think. I've done articles on people whose lives have been changed overnight by an accident that left them paraplegic or quadriplegic. Evidently I had narrowly missed that fate; and I mean narrowly--my break was about one-half inch from the spinal cord. However, if my artery was leaking, an artery that feeds the brain, or if it threw a clot, well, a fate worse than paralysis awaited me.

I stayed calm throughout, my pulse holding steady around 70. And as I lay there, contemplating what I had just been teaching in Los Alamos about prayer, and facing the imminent possibility of death for the first time, I felt very peaceful. I reflected on what a wonderful life I have had, with a life-giving marriage partner of 37 years, all but three of Colorado's 54 14,000-foot mountains under my belt, adventures in more than 50 countries, work that allows me both meaning and total freedom. Just that weekend I had heard again story after story of people who have been touched by one of my books. I looked back on my life and felt no regrets (well, I would like to get those last three "14ers" climbed). And as I thought of what may await me, I felt a feeling of great trust. No one raised in the kind of church environment I grew up in totally leaves behind the acrid smell of fire and brimstone, but I felt an overwhelming sense of trust in God. I have come to know a God of compassion and mercy and love. I have no clue what heaven or an afterlife will be like but I felt sustained by that trust. OK, the morphine drip was beginning to kick in too!

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March (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51