...ill fated night...

" It was just an ill fated night" said the little old lady, who called 911. Right after she heard my niece, Sarah, screaming bloody-freaking-murder at 1 am.

Allow me to explain in what has to be the longest blog post I will ever write in my entire life. I do not blame you, if you'd like to read this a little at a time, over the next week.

Last week, me, my sister Kacie, my 18 year old niece Sophie, and my 14 year old niece Sarah, all took a little midnight ride in the canoe on the Flathead river... Ok not midnight.... it's was like 10:30pm. ( dumb I know, let's not talk about it) Most importantly, it was really dark and really cold.

49 degrees to be exact.

An hour later, we hit an "eddy", as they call them here in Big Sky Country. I call it a scary -we're all gonna die tonight- swirling vortex of horror. You probably call it a whirlpool :)

Our trusty flashlight had pooped out early on in the ride, so we didn't see the whirlpool until we were falling out of our canoe, into it. I was in the back so I saw the boat just dump the other 3 girls and then all of the sudden, I was under water. 40 degree glacier runoff water, mind you.

Oh, did I mention it was 49 degrees that night? DUMB.

Side note: we were ALL wearing life jackets. THANK HEAVENS. Another side note is that we were all wearing jeans, sweaters, scarves, beanies, gloves, and big wool socks with no shoes. Wearing all that boo-yah doesn't exactly make swimming EASY by ANY stretch of the imagination).

Like I said, we were on the Flathead river which is a really wide and really fast river... like 50 yards across and the current was a "sweep you off your feet and take you to your death" type of fast.

Here is the Flathead river... kinda of a bad photo...but you get the idea.

Back to me, underwater.

My first thought was  "Ok. I have kids, so I'm going to need to get out of this water." My next thought was  picturing Macy's red hair for some reason, and then picturing Rich, holding Luke. I decided I needed to do whatever it took to see those people again.

The next thing I know, I'm standing on an island in the middle of the river. I don't have any idea how I got out of the water, or onto the little island and none of the girls saw me get out.

Cue the goosebumps, angelic choir singing and general disbelief......FREAKY!!! But we'll save those thoughts for a testimony meeting or a BYU channel exclusive special or something.

As I stood on shore, I watched as my nieces were stuck in the whirlpool. Kacie, my sister, was just exiting the whirlpool/ swimming/being carried away by the current and I was really regretting asking Rich to watch Oprah instead of Man vs. Wild all those times. That guy knows what the heck he's talking about and I'm sure he's reviewed whirlpool exit strategies before. I was helpless and terrified. I instinctively knew not to jump back in to save them so I just started to pray. SUPER hard.

Who knows how long later, I was still praying and suddenly my niece Sophia was standing next to me. I hugged her soaking wet self SO tight. Then I heard Kacie screaming from the opposite side of the river that she was ok. Poor little Sarah was still stuck in the whirlpool. I told Sophie to start to pray as I screamed to Sarah to kick out of the eddy to the side and/ or try to stand up. I had no idea what to do so I just screamed a bunch of random ideas. It was so dark, the only thing I could see was her blonde hair, bobbing in and out of the water. It is an image I will never be able to get out of my head. Nothing I was yelling was seeming to work, so I started the praying thing again.

30 seconds later Sarah was out of the whirlpool and headed down the river, fast. Later, she told me that she floated by Kacie, who was screaming at her to swim to the side. It didn't workfor her and as soon as Sarah passed Kacie, Sarah told us that she just gave up. She said that she then thought she was going to die, and  then, she peed her pants. I find it terrifying that she gave up and hilarious that she peed her pants. Like "I give up, I'm just gonna pee now, because I'm going to die anyways." She said she started to repent ( another thing I find hilarious for some morbid reason) and in the middle of repenting, her foot hit a rock, which knocked her out of the confession box and back to reality. She was able to make it to a 3 foot by 4 foot piece of shore, where she started screaming to us  (about 25 yards away) that she was ok.

Back to the island where Sophie and I were.....

We heard Sarah scream that she was ok and then I started the ugly cry. Like the kind where your face turns into the uncontrollable nasty look and where all your breath is being pushed out of your body in the form of crying/honking and you are about to start doing some of the that southern, praise Jesus, thankful, half cry- half scream, I can't believe it, thing.

You know what I'm talking about.

I grabbed Sophie and started jumping up and down as I continued the ugly cry. Sophie was crying and yelling of happiness/gratefulness, but she is so adorable that I'm pretty sure she is incapable of the ugly cry.

Then I went into crisis management. I decided then, that we had to get back in the water and cross to the side of the river where the road was. Sophie, being the rock star, save the day hero that she is, decided to come with me. We wadded in until we couldn't stand anymore and tried to swim while being further swept down the river. Sophie spotted a log that had fallen into the water but was still halfway on land so it looked like a little ramp onto land. There were no  REAL shores on that side, just straight up and down mini cliffs that were unclimbable, so her spotting that log saved our frozen butts. I gave her a push toward it, she grabbed it, then with one hand on the log, reached out and grabbed me. We pulled ourselves to it, and then because we were on the north side of the log, the current pinned us there. Since we had life jackets on, we couldn't get under the log alone to get to the other non-current pushing side. After some quick thinking and bravery on both our parts, I pushed Sophie's head underwater so she could pop up on the other side where the current wasn't so strong, and pull herself up onto the log so that she could shimmy up the log. Everything went off without a hitch until she made it up land and shouted back down to my still pinned, still freezing self, that THERE WAS NO ROAD.

ARE. YOU. JOKING.

My keen sense of direction had led us to the OPPOSITE side of where the road was.

Then I thought FABULOUS....JUST PEACHY FREAKIN FREEZING MY BUTT OFF FABULOUS.

We are ALL GOING TO DIE.

Meanwhile, I was still pinned to the log and had no one to push my head underwater. I screamed help a few times, which totally boggles my mind. Who was I screaming for? I think it was the first time that night that I was out of ideas and really started to panic.

Then something scary happened. I started to pass out. My speech got really slow and slurred. I knew passing out would mean BAD NEWS, so by the power of greyskull ( name that show) I leveraged my hands under the log and  pushed up, causing my head to go under it and I popped out on the other side. I pulled my fabulous freezing abutt out of the water and slowly, but surely, made my way up the log to meet Sophie. In a field. Void of any roads. NO BUENO.

That's when the screaming and whistling S.O.S. in Morse code commenced. ( Thank you Paradise Stake girls camp for teaching me that valuable skill) Oh, and about 47 additional super long prayers. I think I prayed more that night than all the times I have prayed in the year 2010 put together. Sophie and I could barely hear Sarah and Kacie and we were for sure assuming the worst which was they are icicles by now. Sophie was scared there might be bears, but I told her there is no way you can fall out of a canoe into rapids AND get eaten by a bear all in the same day. So that ended that. So more screaming, more whistling, more praying.

THEN LIKE A SCENE OUT OF A MOVIE we saw 3 big flashlights coming down the hill on the side of the river that Kacie and Sarah were on. ( you know... the side with the ROAD) We couldn't hear or really see what was going on, but by the looks of the groups of lights, it looked like they had both been found.

We were so excited they had been found, and knew we would be found soon after....so as the adreniline started to wear off, the cold started to set in. We did jumping jacks, ran in circles, sang every song we could think of and prayed just a little more to try and keep warm in our soaking wet jeans, sweaters, scarves and no shoes. ( We had taken them off to be more comfortable int he canoe, and they all fell into the river with the canoe. Bye shoes.)

According to the rescue guy, it took them an hour and half from the time they reached Kacie and Sarah, to rescue Sophie and me. We were picked up by the search and rescue boat. We were "welcomed" back on land in Columbia Falls by 15 men ( I counted them because I needed to know how many thank you plates of cookies to make) 3 police cars, the sheriff, and an ambulance. I WAS SO EMBARRASSED. Can you imagine what they thought of these 4 dumb girls?! I will never forget the embarrasment as long as I live.

As we piled into the ambulance to get checked out, my niece Sarah looked at us and said " I saved your butts." Which is true. That little patch of shore she just happened to land on was about 200 feet below an old man and woman's house, who heard Sarah's crazy horror movie caliber screams and called 911. Sarah thanked her and hugged her when she met them and the little old lady hugged her back and said "oh hunny it was just an ill fated night"

While in the ambulance, we sat down to warm up and get our vitals taken. Everyone was pretty cold, but still ok, except cute little Sophie who had full on hypothermia. I stayed with her and we took the ambulance to the hospital, where she had to stay for about an hour and a half, until they warmed her back up. It was a awful experience for her and I still feel HORRIBLE about it.

When we all got home at 4:45AM, I discovered my OBLIVIOUS red headed husband SOUND ASLEEP in our bed. I climbed in and he mumbled something like " Did you scratch the car getting the canoe loaded?" To which I replied. "It was pretty bad" He woke up a little more and said in a semi panic " Is the canoe ok?" I just rolled over and said "It's fine...It's at the bottom of the Flathead River"

SUMMARY:
Lost: 1 Canoe, 2 Oars, 1 life jacket, 100 dollars worth of shoes, and our senses.

Gained: respect for the water, a lifelong memory, perspective on how easily you can lose your life, and the strongest testimony that Heavenly Father loves us and knows us. He is the one that really saved us that night. Some good friends of mine asked " Where was Jack Bauer while this was all going down?" And while that would have been SWEET to get saved by my boyfriend Jack Bauer, I know that Heavenly Father protected all of us that ill fated night. He answered some of the most fervent and faithful prayers I've ever prayed. He knows us, loves us, and protects us, every minute of everyday. It blows my mind that even with all the people in this world going through all their own hard times and major struggles, he can be so aware of 4 silly girls in the middle of Montana.

SO... I didn't die.

Go, hug your loved ones, say a prayer and stay out of the water .