Today I wake up feeling lighter, more hopeful. The load has shifted. I make a cup of tea and pick up Tui's photo albums. Like me, she is an archivist. The page I open takes me to the night I faced my past and my future. My date with destiny in the Cromwell Gorge.
The end of the Cromwell Gorge and the beginning of Lake Dunstan
I've got history in the Cromwell Gorge, now Lake Dunstan. In 1991 I was driving south to Tui and Lionel's to begin my second teaching section at Cromwell College. It was Sunday after a big drinking night. I was tired and hung over, feeling droopy, intending to stop for petrol at Cromwell. But I didn't. Halfway through the gorge I woke up as the Mitsubishi was pointing head first into darkness. I had enough time to swing the wheel sideways. The car rolled over and over and my head rolled with it. But the seatbelt pinned my body securely to the driver's seat. The noise of metal hitting and crunching over rock rang out again and again. Objects I had packed in loosely hurled themselves from one side of the car to the other. I hung on, gripping the steering wheel tightly. When the car stopped a deafening silence and darkness blanketed me. I was numb, knew I had to get back to the road. No-one had seen me go over and if I stayed here I would get exposure, brain damage, probably die.
I tried to open the driver's door. I couldn't, rocks pinned it closed. So I clambered through the windscreen, severing a tendon in my foot. I didn't feel pain, adrenaline propelled my legs upward, carrying my tired body to safely. I thought, if I die now I've travelled and lived a full life. Done a lot. Straight after, I've got more to do. The rocks were slippery but adrenaline and survival instinct pushed my legs up to the road. The night was frosty and still. I cried aloud, muttering to myself, the effort of remaining upright requiring all the energy I could muster. In the distance a car. I waved my arms. It stopped.
The driver put me in the front seat and drove to Dunstan Hospital. When he braked I cried aloud My neck hurt, so did my head. At the hospital I was put in a wheel chair. A doctor I knew from student days at Otago Uni, Graham Carpenter, took great care sewing up a deep gash in my forehead. I managed to communicate Tui and Lionel's info. The look of shock and concern on their faces was sobering. Next day at Dunedin a team of 8 moved me from the stretcher onto a trundler. On the ward I found out I had a C2 fracture, hyperextension from the impact of a heavy object. I suspect it was my sewing machine. I had also severed a tendon in my left foot when I climbed through the wind screen.
So every time I drive through the gorge I look at the water, so much closer now, and remember the night I nearly killed myself. Today rain is streaming in torrents. I've just been for a swim, drops falling into the water bouncing silver at eye level. An Eider duck and six chicks paddling nearby. I stop at Lynne's in Cromwell to pick up a ceramic disc then visit Doug, a drowned rat. Me, not him. He makes toast and tea. We speak of cabbages and kings.
When I get to Sousa's at Wanaka, I realise I want to give the Suzuki, which I bought from her 5 years ago, back. She needs it, We drink Margaritas and Sousa looks at my astrological chart. A night for the heavens grounded by memories of a historic car accident. My destiny etched far above the Cromwell Gorge.
No comments:
Post a Comment