On my tours with Uncle Smokey, one of the places i worked at had a natural hot spring nearby. The springs had 2 accesses to it, one was a seven mile drive, then a three mile hike. The other was a three mile drive then a 1/2 mile hike. The shorter route entailed crossing an eighteen inch diameter log across rapids.

  One merry April day I decided to go to the hot springs unescorted,and as we all know ,when we are unsupervised we tend to do things we would not do normally.

  upon my arrival to the crude log bridge I noticed that the log had been getting splashed by wavelets from the melt off swollen North Umpqua river.  " no Big deal ", I thought. So off across the log I went.

  About halfway across, my footing gave way with my legs going in opposite directions. I was able to catch myself with out the normal nutcracker effect,and with both of my size 14 feet in the water.

  "hmmm, how am I to get my way out of this" I thought to myself.  About that time the river made my mind up for me,the swift water catching my feet and spinning my feet around like some kind of a perverted propeller,and then sending me downstream. My first breath of fresh air came up about 60 yards from the log bridge,and there were no signs of slowing down.

  As this was early spring I needed to get out before hypothermia could beginto set in. i managed to get close to shore where the water was only knee deep,however still to swift to stand up in,so I crawled to slower water and got to my feet and made my way back to my Beetle,and drove back to the Ranger Station.

  I guess the lesson learned was: keep your head, and the next time take a more mature individual with mee to keep me from getting stupid.