When Ray Green and I, and his sister Holly, used to play along the watercourse of our neighborhood's section of Ramble Creek, in the Harris Crescent ravine, in Burlington, we did so with eyes wide open. It was a most wondrous place for kids to play, and for most of the rolling year there were few if any imminent dangers. We were kept back in the late spring when the run-off from this part of town was heaviest, and it was remarkable to watch from far back on the shore, as the little, gently flowing creek could represent such a torrent of fast and much deeper water to empty in to Lake Ontario. No parent in our neighborhood misunderstood how fast a child could be sucked under by the raging current, and for the years we lived in that Harris Crescent apartment, there was not a single near drowning or otherwise. Well, that isn't quite true. I had my second near death experience before I was eight years old. The first, as I mentioned was several years earlier when I had a sort of whooping cough type ailment that wouldn't pass, largely because I was allergic to the antibiotic that would have been most helpful. The Guardian Angel I met in my fevered state, obviously on my way to recovery, on her assurance I had some time left in this mortal coil, I began a relationship of sorts that would involve a number of rescues that seemingly had some providential characteristic that I didn't always attribute to such guardianship. I think on five out of seven misadventures, that nearly proved fatal, I did, at the very least, thank God for my survival against the odds which I have been told since were rather hight. The Ramble Creek incident for one.
My mate Ray and someone else I don't recall, had arrived at creekside just a few days before the ice break-up and the expected water surge we had witnessed in other spring seasons. You can probably visualize the scene. It was a sparkling mid spring afternoon, with sun glow sparkling down through the bare hardwood boughs, with a warmth reminiscent of the kinder weather to come. There were still pockets of ice over the deeper pools of the creek, and we found one soon after arriving in the bottom land of the ravine, and it didn't take much time for the three of us to have begun exploiting the sliding potential, and mock hockey game without sticks and puck. We began kicking a small piece of ice that had broken free, and set up a makeshift net, and Ray was the designated goaltender.
We played for about fifteen minutes before we got tired of hockey, and became more intent, as youngsters are known to folly when bored, and resorted to actually trying to crack through the remaining ice sheet of unknown thickness. I'm not kidding. We all jumped up and down on that black shimmering patch of ice trying to get it to crack. But nature's creation had held-up well for the first five or so minutes of us trying to shatter what was then reflecting the sky as a photographic negative, and we could see our own faces being passed over by the clouds moving in with a threat of eventual rain.
We had actually come to terms with the fact the ice was stronger and more resilient than we were capable of its destruction. Ray and his friend had gone back to the shore, leaving me to have one last go at the task of showing nature who was more powerful. I turned to look back at the pair on the creek bank, and was genuinely interested at that moment, in following their lead, and finding something else to do in the ravine, our favorite location to wile away the daylight hours. As I took one step toward them, I felt the ice give way, and heard the shattering of ice and the fluid sound of water coming over the surface, as the surface I was standing on tilted violently into the water forcing me to drop to the creek bed. When my boots hit the rocks on the bottom of the creek, and immediately filled with ice water, as did my snowsuit, I would have been up to my stomach in faster moving water that I could have imagined. It looked so safe when we went out on the ice and I didn't think it was quite as deep. And I had no idea what the current could do to me, wedged against the glass-like layer of ice that remained that held me tight with the pressure of the flow.
In only seconds, I began to feel the tug of the current pulling me below the ice, and it took every bit of energy to wedge myself against the edge of the jagged surface, as I tried to stay upright on the slippery rocks on the creek bed. The weight of my snowsuit was incredible and there was no way I could get out on my own even if I had made that the priority. The ice kept breaking away except when I was being crushed against it by the strong current. I could only look up occasionally to see where my mates had got to, and if they were going to help me out of this dangerous situation. I only recall seeing Ray running up the hill toward our apartment, but I never recall him coming back down with my mother, who he had obviously gone to get when he left the scene. While our apartment was only a hundred yards away, it still would have taken a considerable amount of time for my mother Merle to get her boots and coat on, and come down from the third floor where we lived at 2138 Harris Crescent. Obviously, her fear that I was about to perish put wings on her feet that afternoon, and I do credit her with my rescue.
There are some aspects to my rescue that I have recalled many times, that didn't quite add up. I don't really remember being pulled out of the icy water by my mother and I can not visualize the act of the rescue, other than the sensation of being lifted free of the water by a powerful embrace and pull of my shoulders. When I was safely on the bank, and I was able to reckon with my survival, I witnessed the silhouette of a rescuer, other than my mother then at my side, who seemed to vaporize along the pathway into the denser woodlot of the ravine. I could only hear my mother's voice, and the force of her hand on the "scruff of my neck," as she would say, hauling me to my feet, and yelling at me as I stumbled in water filled boots and snowsuit up the hillside toward home. Point is, there is no way my five foot six mother could have pulled me, by herself, from that four feet of fast flowing water. Ray and his friend were no where in sight, and he acknowledged this later when we met up. My mother was the only person who fished me out of a swollen Ramble Creek. Unless of course, it was my Guardian Angel, called upon for a second time in my young life.
I have had near drowning events thwarted by a heavenly intervention on five other occasions, including a swimming misadventure at Bass Rock, on the Muskoka River; once during a canoe mishap with my partner Suzanne, in rapids on the South Branch of the same river system; after a body slam knocked me out, when another swimming mate dove from a dock, at Lake Muskoka's Kirby's Beach, onto my head; a car accident in my late teens, with three other youths on the Butter and Egg Road in Milford Bay; and just yesterday here in my backyard, when I came face to face with a real live frightened rogue moose raging through our neighbor's woodlot, fifteen feet or less from me, with nowhere to retreat. Suzanne fortunately had just come two minutes earlier to take Muffin the dog into the house. She would have been right in the path of the exiting moose and I would have been the after-thought. I've never been this close to a moose on the loose, and ironically, I was standing over the wee grave we made for our recently deceased cat Angus. In fact, the moose would have stumbled over the loose dirt of the grave, before blasting into the dog and I right in its path. With only a few feet and lesser seconds, the moose in full flight veered to its right, being my left, and went right through the home playground of our neighbors to the east. If the children had been playing there at the time, there would have been casualties. Guardian Angel? All I know is that I would have been injured and our pet seriously stomped if the moose had not been diverted by some unknown reckoning. But it's just one of those things, you know, that makes one ponder what made that situation change so quickly; just as I have no real recollection of how I was pulled from the frigid water of Ramble Creek by my small mother in the knick of time.
My first encounter with what I believe was my Guardian Angel, was most profoundly, a life altering experience, but because of my age, I didn't really appreciate it as I came to in later years. It is said by those who know of such things as angel-dreams and visitations, that the recipient is never really the same afterwards, but in a good way of possessing deeper insight and I suppose enlightenment. I have had numerous similar encounters, each a beautiful sensation of calm and peaceful restitution from adverse circumstances. This angel encounter for me has been a part of my life and times ever since that early introduction, and it is impossible to ignore what characteristic of good will it imposed. Imagine any near death experience, when you arrive safely on the other side of near fatal circumstance, thanking heartily whatever and whoever offered that preservative intervention. I never have a problem paying thanks to God and my Guardian Angel, because I've got some pretty compelling evidence, by my survival against the odds, that there's a reason I'm still hanging around. I'm not a particularly religious our spiritual person but I pay thanks where I believe it is deserved, and my Guardian Angel has got a pretty fair work-out keeping me amongst the living. Maybe you'd agree. Have you had an angel encounter yourself? Cherish it as a most enlightening inspiration that will never fail in its glow of benevolence.
The only ice I have played on since that near fateful day on Ramble Creek, has belonged to the local arenas, where there isn't fast water raging below.
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