To this day I can’t explain why I am still alive. I should be dead. My mother and I were visiting my grandmother and uncle, during my summer vacation. I was about 10 years old . They lived in a very rural area. The valley where they lived was quite narrow, running north to south. It might have taken 5 minutes to drive from one side to the other and both sides of this valley, were heavily forested. The western mountain side, very green and wet and the eastern side a bit drier.
A creek snaked its way along the length of the valley. It was fed by the melting snow and ice from the nearby towering mountains. In spring time the creek became a raging torrent of water, several times its summer time width. Very often it would flood the bottom of the valley, where the fertile farm land was located. Grandmother’s farm was often flooded in spring time, if the weather suddenly became hot. This would cause rapid snow melt, feeding the creek, making it turn into a huge monstrous torrent of ever expanding water.
By summer time the creek settled down, to a fraction of its spring time size. There was a highway lane size, main current area, flanked by...