Concerning the events of my December, 2004 trip

In mid December, Don Dahl and Jerry's House (pre-Squalor members included the following: me, Bryan Roach, Jay Simpson, Jerry Schreck and Chris Prather) had a weekend vacation together. We drove to Jonesboro, IL and rented a cabin from Rustic Hideaway Cabins. The cabin sported an outdoor jacuzzi :)

We arrived on Friday and enjoyed getting to know the cabin and the 'tub, as is our wont.

Saturday arrived, and contrary to my gut instinct, I joined the guys hiking at the Little Grand Canyon. (I awoke Saturday morning with zero desire to go sight-seeing)

After about a fifteen minute drive to the canyon, we arrived and I started down the trail, which was about 4 feet wide and covered in gravel. Needless to say, the pioneer in me wasn't very happy. Another thing that added to my poor attitude was that my party seemed to dawdle at the top of the park, reading some stupid map and such.

I wanted to get going. So I did.

I quickly corrected myself and went back to the guys so that we could stay togther, you know, really try to make this a good bonding time.

The trail was boring. Everything looked exactly the same.

So I left the trail.

I noticed in the distance (west of the trail) an old tree that was close to falling over. As a child, my dad and I would walk around various woods and push down such trees. Wanting to relive my childhood, I left the trail and my friends behind and ventured out into the woods to push down a tree.

The tree didn't budge.

By this time, the rest of the group started on their way, and I figured that I would catch up. I proceeded south to the canyon wall (we were on the top of the canyon at the time). Soon I began to climb down the canyon wall to take some pictures of the rock formations and such. I was quite smug as I knew that the guys were missing out on such a cool and unique opportunity to enjoy this canyon. I wished that Ed Wilcoski were with me, as I was certain that he would be joining me in forging our own way through the canyon.

I began to climb down the wall some more, only to find that I could climb no further safely.

I climbed back up the short distance that I climbed down and soon found a new spot to try to climb down. It was around this time that I began to hear the guys yelling for me. I wasn't certain, but thought that they were already on the canyon floor, which looked to be only about a dozen or so feet from where I was looking.

I would soon find out that this assumption was false.

As I began to climb down in the new spot, the guys obviously hadn't heard me returning their calls, so as they yelled together, I yelled loudly "WHAT?!?" They began to laugh.

I was making my way from tree to tree as there were several 4-5 inch diameter trees littering their way down the side of the canyon. My idea was to go from tree to tree since they were firmly rooted in the canyon wall. I figured that I would soon be at the bottom of the canyon. If only I knew how right I would be :)

At one point, I had to make a desperate attempt for the next tree, since it was out of my reach. I slid on my stomach and grabbed for the tree as I slid by it, swinging my legs out and grabbing the next tree with my feet. I thought to myself, "if this is the hardest part of climbing down, I'm doing pretty well." Reorienting myself, I began to reach for the next tree, but found that it was out of reach. It was then that I noticed that the wall of the canyon was quite porous. The wall was full of handheld-size holes that I began to climb down.

I should have stuck with the trees.

I noticed that I dropped my water bottle during the wild swinging action described previously and found it a few feet below me; it stopped to rest on the moss-covered rock wall right next to where I was climbing. (The rock wall was quite beautiful, by the way)

My feet slipped out of the holes they were in, and i began sliding down on my stomach. I was amazingly aware of the situation I was in, and managed to turn over so that I was sliding down in a sitting position. I began grabbing with my right arm for something to hold on to. I slid into the moss covered section where my water bottle landed. About a half a second of this went by, and the ground left me.

At this point, in the wink of an eye, I thought I was A1 screwed. I screamed what I thought was my last scream.

I free-fell about 15-20 feet and landed hard on the rocks below. My awareness allowed me to land mainly on my butt on the left side, since landing totally perpendicular seemed to be a bad idea to me. The wind was knocked out of me, and I couldn't take deep breaths as I assessed my situation.

Alert and aware times 3 maybe?

My neck and head were intact, they hadn't hit anything and was not jarred. I kicked my legs were straight in front of me as I fell, as I was certain they would break otherwise. My right leg hurt a lot, as I landed on a rock.

I stood up almost immediately and started stagger forward. I collapsed on a log. I heard the guys begin to yell for me and I realized that I was on the floor of the canyon while they were still on the top. I couldn't yell back to them as I couldn't breathe deep enough. They soon saw me splayed out on this log that I collapsed on and asked what happened, if I was okay, and if I could walk. My only thought was I hope they carry me out.

After about five minutes, I managed to stand up and stagger forth. About 75 yards to so I saw the canyon open up and saw the guys at the top.

I made my way to the top of the canyon, and Don took me to the cabin to relax. My new jeans were totally ruined, the ass was totally torn out. I soon found myself soaking in the jacuzzi hoping to God that nothing was seriously wrong with me.

Later that night we went out to dinner, and I became nauseous from pain. That was a new experience.

I ended up going to the doctor a few days later, and the nurse practitioner told me that I pulled basically every muscle in my back, and I was lucky that that was the extent of the damage. My ankle and wrist also hurt and she gave those a looking at. The ensuing x-ray of my ankle was negative, which really means that nothing was wrong, which I perceive to be positive, but I'm just a patient, right?

With muscle relaxants (prescribed by the nurse practitioner) in hand, I set off for the GCM Ignite conference. The pain was excruciating. After the 6+ hour long drive to Columbus, OH for the conference, my back was killing me. I skipped out of the first night's events in order to relax and prepare to sleep things off. I watched Monday Night Football. The Rams played. It was back when they weren't "great" but they were "good."

The pain didn't ease up much. Sleep didn't happen. During the middle of the night I tried to go to the bathroom in order to stay awake in a lit room (I figured I could at least read…) and I stepped on my roommate Marcus.

He scared the living crap out of me.

Marcus suffers from "night terrors," which means that he sits up and acts as though he'll rend your flesh from its bones if you step on him in the middle of the night. Serious stuff, these night terrors.

Anyways, after the conference I went back to the doctor to see what was makin' me ill. I saw a real doctor who x-rayed my back.

They referred me to a neurosurgeon. I had a broken back.

Freakin' A. A broken back! More precisely, an L1 Compression Fracture. The neurosurgeon referred to it as a "cheerleader fracture."

Well rah rah sisk boom bah.

She went on to tell me that I looked to be about 5 weeks into an 8 week injury, and that she suggested that I just tough it out. She also added that had I come to her first, she would have taken away all of my pain, as well as added inches to my penis and provided me with a private jet. Well, maybe those last two were made up, but it really does explain how magical her words sounded at the time.

I ended up going to physical therapy for a few months, which really did relieve a lot of pain in my middle back.

In May of 2005 I ventured back into the Little Grand Canyon to measure exactly how far I did fall.

I was wrong.

20 feet was way off.

According to the laser-measuring tool, I fell approximately 17 yards (thank you Pythagoreas!)

17 yards is 51 feet. 51 feet!

I've never felt more alive than I did at that moment. I measured again, 17 feet, three more measurements from similar points yielded the same results.

My name is Josh Peters, and I cannot die (cue Queen's "Highlander" theme song).