Wow…I had a weird experience today… Raffa and I just got back from hiking down in Big Sur, at Garrapata State Park. Beautiful place. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures, mainly because of what happened.

We were hiking along this really rocky and sketchy trail. We were up above, on a little cliff (about 50 feet up) and walking down the trail toward the creek bed, when we heard someone crying for help. Raffa ran down the hill and I came following behind. When I got down there I saw and older woman, around 70 years old, sitting up in the creek. She had fallen about 50 feet down the cliff into the creek! Raf and I helped out of the water and sat her down on the side of the creek. She was all scraped up – her hands and face were all bloody. She was soaking wet. And the the thing that really concerned me the most is that she seemed really confused. I asked her what happened and if she fell down the cliff and at first she said, “no”, but then she said that she didn’t remember. It was obvious that she had fallen down the cliff because Raffa had to climb up it a little bit to get her walking stick.

Raffa decided that he needed to hurry up and get some help so we decided that I would stay with her and he would try to find someone. Just as he was turning to go there were some hikers that came down the hill. I asked them if they could help us and it turns out that thy actually knew the lady really well. I was thanking God at that point! They knew exactly what to do right away and one of the guys left right away to find help. Raffa and I hiked back to the trailhead. The accident happened quite a ways in – it took us about 40 mins to get back to the trail-head, algthough we did kind of walk slow (I was feeling kind of oogily). When we got there the other guys were driving up and parking thier car. They had to drive somewhere to call 911. As we were leaving the sheriff pulled up and then the ambulence pulled up. I felt a better knowing that help was on the way.

It was a miracle that she wasn’t more hurt then she was! I thought for sure when I saw her sitting there in the creek that she had broken a leg or arm, but she only had a few bruises and scratches. She is so lucky.

On the way home we really got to thinking and talking about how fricken important it is to bring supplies when you go hiking – even if it is only a little day hike like what we did. We should have had a space blanket to keep the woman warm, an first aid kit, etc. And from now on we are going to pack a backpack with stuff like that. You never know what you will find…It might not be for you, it might be for someone else in trouble.