Yesterday I fell off a bridge into running water. Fortunately, it was a tiny bridge and the water wasn't very deep. How it appears to have happened contains a life lesson.
Yesterday I was taking our dog, Mooka, on her usual late afternoon walk, which begins on our property in rural south Salem. I had her on a leash, since the area by a creek is favored by raccoons, and we don't want Mooka running off and tangling with one.
I'd just crossed a little bridge that crosses the main part of Spring Creek, a short creek that feeds Spring Lake. The photo above shows the scene of my fall, a second bridge that crosses a smaller creek that only has considerable water in it after heavy rains.
Mooka was in the lead as I started to walk across the bridge, turning my head to the right to observe the mini-waterfall on the usually mostly dry smaller creek. (The waterfall is the splash of white past the ferns on the left side of the creek.)
Then I suddenly found myself falling off the bridge on the downstream (left) side. Best I can figure out is that as my attention was focused on the mini-waterfall, Mooka had started to pull on the leash I was holding, as she always does when our dog prepares to jog up some stone steps leading away from the creek.
I must have reached out to a snag that was the rotting remains of a tree that used to grow just past the bridge, but had lost most of its trunk in an ice storm, if I remember correctly. The snag pulled out of the ground, falling into the creek just before I did.
Here you can see the snag laying in the creek. Fortunately, I missed it, toppling into the water instead. As falls go, it was a fairly elegant one. I'd let go of the leash, so Mooka wasn't affected. I was wearing high topped boots, so I didn't twist my ankle.
I just climbed back onto the bridge and looked for the dog. But first I had to deal with my Apple Watch beeping loudly.
It had registered that I'd fallen and had started a 30-second countdown, I think it was, until 911 was called (I had my iPhone with me, so I assume that's how the call would be made). I was able to cancel the 911 call just in time, after first pressing "No" on my watch's screen, then realizing the question was Do you want to cancel the 911 call? and I needed to press "Yes."
Over on my Church of the Churchless blog I'd recently written a post about how scientists have measured how quickly human cognition works, finding that it is amazingly slow at 10 bits per second. One of the lessons, said the researchers, was that the mind can only do one thing at a time.
That was my problem, I believe. My attention had been split between walking across the bridge with a dog leash in my hand just as the dog was pulling on the leash to get up the stone steps, while I was looking at the mini waterfall.
All that combined to throw me off balance. I suspect that if I hadn't been looking at the waterfall, I would have done what I usually do, walk faster to keep up with the dog. But I had slowed to inspect the rare waterfall.
Anyway, I didn't suffer from my tumble into the creek. I just had to walk in soggy shoes and socks the rest of the way. From now on I'll try to do a bit better with the One Thing at a Time notion.
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