Left Behind

*Continuation from previous week*
Martin, his kid, and I were coming home from a Southern Utah adventure. Our vehicle was stranded on the freeway just outside Spanish Fork. I was on a mission to procure a gas can and gas. The advanced technology at the gas station had finally decided it had taken a long enough break, it came back online, and I was able to pump five gallons of fuel into my newly acquired container. I breathed a sigh of relief as I began making my way back to the forlorn Suburban blocking a lane of traffic on I-15. This was the second time on this trip that the Suburban had made me believe that I wasn’t going to make it home.
The first morning we woke up in one of the most beautiful canyons I had ever experienced. It wasn’t so much the landscape that made it amazing; it was the serenity. And the way the canyon made me think about life and how complicated things become in the city, but that nature can always put things back into perspective. That morning Martin decided it would be fun to teach his 11-year-old boy the ins and outs of off-roading, so he put him in the driver’s seat. Within two minutes we were six inches deep in a wash that had recently seen a lot of rain. I immediately thought the worst and decided that we might as well choose now which one of us would be eaten first. In all reality we were only a few miles from the nearest highway, but the human mind has a way of instantly kicking into panic mode at the first sign of trouble. After taking the wheel, Martin had us out of the wash in mere seconds and I was able to breathe easy again.
Walking back to the Suburban, I wasn’t as panicked as when I initially jumped out of the window and ran toward the gas station. As I thought about my waning panic, I realized the whole trip had been full of moments of short-lived terror and long sighs of relief. Like when Martin’s foot slipped in some mud on the edge of Lake Powell’s shore, and I couldn’t do anything but observe from the top of the rock where I was perched, 200 feet away. Martin’s six-foot-six-inch, 350-pound frame went down like a sack of potatoes, and I knew there was no way I could drag his drowning body back without drowning myself. To Martin’s credit, he got out a good yell before becoming enveloped by the thick, chocolaty water. It sounded like a war cry. Like, even though he knew the lake was going to kill him, he would show his defiance until the bitter end.
Five seconds of shocked silence went by before I heard laughter. From Martin’s kid. I was confused. Until I saw Martin’s face emerge, sputtering. Again he let out a great shout, and then a chuckle of relief that he wasn’t dead. All I could do was lie down and let my tense muscles relax. Relief is one of the best feelings in the world. As if a ton of weight has been lifted off your shoulders.
Cresting the off-ramp to the freeway, the ton of weight I had just shrugged off moments before came right back down on me, full force. The Suburban was not where I had left it ten or fifteen minutes before. There was a line of traffic, though, and I followed it northward about a quarter of a mile beyond the on-ramp. A set of flashing blue, red and white lights was pushing a great, white behemoth down the freeway to the next exit, which was probably a mile away. Panic mode set in and I began running toward my ride home. After 30 seconds or so, reality hit and I knew there was no way I would catch them. I set the full gas can down and reached into my pocket for my phone. The weight on my shoulders increased dramatically as I remembered that my phone was in my backpack. In the Suburban. Which had just disappeared from my sight.
I had been left behind. TO BE CONTINUED…