Learning from a Close Call

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By Joe Renfro, Ed.D.

On March 22, 2022, when up at my place in Hendersonville, North Carolina, I, now age eighty-two, decided I wanted to go about fifty miles over to Yancey County and see a couple of acquaintances. But then I started thinking I might also stop by the place when my grandparents lived about 130 years ago.  I really did not know how to work my smart phone in taking moving pictures, so I stopped by Best Buy, and they showed me, except I don’t think I really got it right. They just assumed I knew more than I did.

I drove to Yancey up in North Carolina-country in order to be in the Bee Log area at a little after three on Tuesday afternoon. I thought I had found the right place to turn, in that I had been up there about ten or twelve years ago with a mountain man from up there and had gone down to the place my grandparents had lived, which had then been a real strain, going down and coming back up back then.

But, after diving down the first highway I entered the area, and I stared to take a road that just looked too hard and was  looked wrong.  There I ran in to a couple walking on the side of the road, a man and woman, and  they told me I had to first go over the hill and then take the first right road. It so happened also, that as I got there, that two men were there and they told me the gate  to the property was posted and chained, but it was not locked, just made to look like it. Praise the Lord, I thought, I going to get to take those videos.

It was 1.5 miles over there to the place I wanted to go, driving through the woodlands on a small, narrow, country road to the end of the road.  About after about one-quarter of a mile on the road I came to the gate, got out of the car unlatched it, moved the gate, went into the land, and closed the gate back.  Then I passed the house where the man who had owned the land back years ago, that I understand he had sold it, but it was the only house on the road or in sight.

When I got to his sawmill and woodworking facility the road ended, so I parked, got out and looked the situation over.  I could not see the place I wanted to go to, down the mountain below, but I wanted to get those videos to share with my family.

However, I began to notice just as about to get a view of the house after about an hour’s walk down hill, I was feelings somewhat weaker, and at that moment I determined not to try to go up an old log house on up the hill or over to the graveyard just to get to the main house and the barn.  I was close to getting to take those videos, so I was going.  I really did not think of my physical shape at eighty-two and having a heart condition was an issue and that this might have been a reason for my weakness!

It was rough traveling, and my balance was not that good, so I got an old rotten tree limb and  broke it off for some support.  At last, after a good while I saw  below me the house and barn standing strong after those many years, although  part of the barn roof was off.  I moved  about the area although I was having trouble standing and when I tried to sit down on a big rock, I missed it, . As I moved slowly about the grounds, I got some great videos, I thought, not knowing I hit the wrong buttons and taking pictures or selfies by accident many times. In fact, when looking back at the videos, those I did manage to take showed my exhaustion and distress!

So about 4:45 I felt it was time to go back. There was a metal pipe to use for a walking stick up beside the house, so I got it, except it was long and heavy, but at least it would not break like the previous sticks I had tried. I walked carefully and then I got to the fence. I put the pole on one wire, pressed it down, but it did not work, as I could not get through.

Finally, I able to loosen one top wire and raise the one below it, pressing down on the pipe.  But my leg got caught with my shoe between two wires.  I couldn’t get it out.  Yet, after I tried to get my shoe off and did, after some trouble I decided it might be better to walk barefooted, so I attached my shoes to my belt and started walking sock feet.  I figured it might take me at most about a couple of hours to get back to my car higher up on the mountain.

However, my left leg was hard to move, and it was real struggle going up the mountain, just a few feet between each stage of stepping, and so I to solve the problem, I started up going in a weaving path, and I got me plain old stick again as a walking stick to help, as I had left the metal pole way back.  It had been too heavy.  Then I had to be really careful, as I kept falling, often breaking the walking sticks.  Yet, praise the Lord, I could find a stick nearby,

Every eight or ten feet I would stop and rest a while before going on. I tried crawling, and in fact tried it many times, but it was basically fruitless and did not help for I slid back down on the slippery ground.

At last, after about a thousand feet from the fence, I saw the top of the ridge. If I could make it to there,  it would be much better traveling, a level land on which to travel, but it was a long way.  I was afraid to try to climb without a walking stick, and the crawling did not help,  I could walk on my hands and feet, placing my body a little higher and not on the ground, but that didn’t help much. I would get up and try to walk, but it was dark, and my smart phone light would not work well at all.

Then I looked below, and it faintly looked like an old roadbed, so I started sliding down the hill, not realizing my wallet was in my pocket and I would lose it, as I slid down the mountain side, which I did.   But it was not an old roadbed.  It was already after nine moving on toward ten, so I called my wife, Carol, but I did not get her.  It was getting really dark. 

The call would have helped me and her as well, and I knew she was worried, and no one knew where I was.  Later when I would get home, I found she had called 911 and called for help some time after nine. The Yancey County sheriff’s office was searching everywhere, but they were nowhere near where I was.

As I struggled along, I got into a brush pile as it was dark, and after struggling to get through it in the dark, and I got up and started to walk again, But I fell backwards into the brush, sinking down in the brush. After a long time and much struggling I crawled out and wobbled on then to see what looked like a pasture up in front of me  You see could faintly see a little better, so that I limpingly made it through a number of other areas, as I stumbled over a number of rocks and logs, hoping I would not trip again.  It was easier to see better then, however out of the woods in an open pasture.  Then I laid on the ground and thanked God. Maybe I could make it.

But the travel was hard, as I would move only about ten or so feet and have to rest.  As I got on up the hill, I spied a bunch of fence-post-lined in the night sky up above me, giving me a way to move in the right direction.  I was getting closer, and I used the fence posts for direction. I got beside them and in time turned the corner, holding onto the top fence wire.  Then, however, after a little while I fell backwards into a post and two posts broke, so that I had barbed wire tangled all around me.   I had to take off my shirt and undershirt from the barbs, and loosen the barbs in my jeans. At last, with many cuts on m and my clothes and spatters of blood, I was free.

It was about one o’clock in the morning after about an eight hour or more struggle up the mountain was completed, after the about one hour down and then the eight hours back up, a nine-hour trip, I made it to my car and thanked God. I then got redressed, although my tee-shirt was on backwards and my clothes torn. I tried to call Carol again, but I did not get her, and I headed home.  It was a hard drive home, for I was seeing double vision out of my right eye and all the signs  were glaring. I drove about ten or so miles below the speed limit, and I got home at 2:55 a.m. Wednesday morning, tired, wobbly, as Carol met me out in the driveway, and held and supported me to walk into the house, and hit the couch.  I was exhausted!

I could have easily died if I had stopped and waited until morning, as a rainstorm was coming, and it was almost impossible to get in there after a rain.  No one knew where I was. Furthermore, I was ignorant of my medical condition. I thank God for giving me the strength to keep pushing on.  I’ve been awfully sore, back and legs, and I’ve had little basically little appetite, sleeping a lot, but I checked about getting a new driver’s license and wallet….

The next day my son took me to get a new driver’s license. Also, my wife Carol, had insisted I go over to the medical clinic in Royston, where to my surprise, I could not go back home, but they insisted I go to the Piedmont Hospital in Athens where they determined I had had a massive heart attack. Since that time, I could not have stents or open-heart surgery, for I had had five by-passes twenty-five years ago. The new route would be medication.   I’ve been in the best treatment available, three or four days in the hospital with all kinds of evaluations,  and I feel I’m improving.

Here was a lesson for me to learn that despite my great error of refusing to see the signs to maybe avoid such a close call with death that by God’s grace and support I was able to come through this most difficult.  I hope to have learned something and to avoid such risky behavior.  Praise God’s name!

At eighty-two, I was very stupid to try something like that, and I hope I’ve learned a lesson!