The Orange Fence

Because I've thought of this event often of late and feel the need to record it for posterity, rewind with me to February or March 2008, in which I was 5+ months pregnant with Mason, Lily a little over 2:

It was a beautifully crisp winter afternoon.  A walk sounded lovely, with temperatures at a balmy 30 degrees or so.  My husband and I walked along, our 2 year old daughter bouncing along beside us as we walked further down our neighborhood road.  We talked about the weather, our daughter, and all the other things we normally talk about on winter walks.

As we rounded the corner and descended the hill that nears my in-law's lake property, one of us remembered the events of the previous 4th-of-July celebration in which my father-in-law had taken the dog out for a walk, the dog had fallen into a deep hole with water in it, there was some commotion about how to get the dog out, and finally the dog was [somewhat dramatically] rescued.

"Where was that hole, anyway?" I asked.  

"Right there, across from the driveway to the lake," he replied, pointing to our right and ahead a hundred yards or so.

"Why was there a hole there?" I asked, wanting more details.

"Oh, long before my dad bought this property they had drilled some test shafts to see if it would be good for mining.  When he cleared the road, he found that one and had it filled.  He pretty much forgot about it until the dog fell into it last summer."

Oh.  That's right.  I now remembered 10+ dumptrucks filled with dirt driving past our house on the way to fill the hole last summer.  This recollection only brought to mind more questions from me.

"Wow.  That must have been a crazy-deep hole.  I mean, how deep are test mine shafts, anyway?  And for that matter, why did it open up again?" 

"I don't know...." he muttered, and then, "...I'm going to go check it out."

"Um.  Okay.  Is it okay?  I mean, is it safe?"

"Cody, it will be fine.  I'm just going to go check it out, it looks like it sunk in a little."

At this point, I take a few steps into the ditch following after him, decide that's a bad idea, turn, and wait on the road with our girl while I watch my man check out the hole on his own.

"Wow, you should see this!  It's crazy how much it sunk!  It's......................................"

And then he was gone.  Disappeared completely.  Like, GONE.  There almost no audible sound at all.

I start screaming, "Shandy!  Shandy {middle initial}!  Shandy {middle initial + last name}!!!"  as if he were in big trouble and really going to get it now.  I abandon my 2 year old in the middle of the road and start for the mysterious father-of-my-children-sucking hole, contemplating my own disappearance in the same insane hole in the 0.002 seconds I could actually think straight.  It seemed like days, but it was probably only a few seconds before I saw a branch kind of moving on top of the hole.  

And, like in some wild action-thriller, my man resurrects himself from the hole.  I'm not kidding, all the scene needed was fog rolling in.  He pulls himself out, hand-over-hand,  and chuckles.  CHUCKLES.

Me?  Well, like any normal person who has just watched her beloved and father-of-her-children disappear into a stinking MINE SHAFT, I crumple on the road and say, "I think I'm going to vomit."

Noteworthy, yes?

Epilogue: The shaft had completely re-opened again.  Insane.  Shandy did not reach the bottom, but did sort of a spread-eagle once he felt himself falling and managed to stop himself from going further.  He then grabbed a branch (or something) and climbed out.  The hole was once again filled with many, many dumptrucks full of dirt, a heavy rock placed on top so that one could see at a glance if it had sunk at all.  An orange construction-type fence was put around it.  My kids want to check it to.this.day. whenever we walk by.  I have more gray hairs than I did then.  Amen.