collision

On Sunday Kurt, Nate, and I decided to go hunting for a geocache in the San Gabriel mountains. We took Kurt's car and I drove. We were pretty far along the Angeles Crest before deciding between two potential caches and we picked the one near Charlton Flats. As we were driving, I noticed another car slowly gaining on me and debated moving over to let it by. I considered waiting until a there was a passing lane, but decided instead to pull over. Before I could pull back onto the road a guy ran up and asked if we had jumper cables. So, we stopped and jumpstarted a stranded SUV before driving the last few miles. As we rounded the last bend and I saw the sign for Charlton Flats I prematurely pulled off the road into a large turnout, then turned around and got back on the road to drive the last 100 feet. I slowed down, spotted a parking space and was turning left into the parking lot when a motorcycle slammed into the side of the car.

The following few minutes I perceived only through a cloud of bewilderment. I remember getting out of the car to find a badly hurt man on the roof. I remember a kindly older couple going off to call 911 while I stared stupidly at my out-of-service-area phone. I remember Kurt asking for my driver's license and writing down information. I think I snapped out of it when the Forest Service guy arrived. Throughout the next hour and a half close to a dozen emergency vehicles of various shapes and sizes showed up. We helped the first two paramedics get the guy onto a stretcher and he was eventually taken away in the helicopter. I think his only serious injury was a surface fracture in his right leg. Based on the damage to Kurt's car an officer estimated the motorcycle's impact speed at 45mph. He had apparently decided to pass me on the left and was coming at me too quickly to notice the turn signal.

It's odd how things work out. If I hadn't pulled over to let a car by we couldn't have helped the people with a dead battery. If we hadn't stopped to jumpstart their car we wouldn't have been in an accident. If we had picked the other cache we wouldn't have been in the accident. If I hadn't pulled off early. If we had taken the slower car. If someone else had driven. If we had left on time. If I had stayed home to get work done. It was the culmination of a multitude of little decisions that placed us at that particular place at that particular time. If anything had gone differently that day we would have hiked happily for a few hours and returned home, never suspecting that we nearly had an accident. How many times, I wonder, have I made a seemingly trivial decision that chanced to bring me out of harm's way? How many times have I lived that day where the accident didn't happen only because I lingered at a light or talked just a little longer or forgot to buy milk? How often is the course of someone's life decided by whether or not they stop to pick up a coin, whether or not they miss their bus, whether or not they said goodbye?

We can never know. No one can predict how a little decision might affect the future. We don't say "let's go to this cache instead because we might get in to an accident." The various reasons by which we weigh decisions seem insignificant when compared to the effects of fate. We make our own decisions, but in many ways we have little control over our lives. Life takes strange turns. Had we stopped 20 feet sooner to watch the fireworks I would never have met Brittan. I wonder what else might have happened and who else I might have met that day. But, we can never know what might have been. And I'll never know what that Sunday hike might have unfolded into had we not been in an accident. The past is unchangeable and the future is unknown. C'est la vie.

The moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.
--Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

PS today I walked around in the rain.