During a snowfall, looking out at my sister's backyard.

How I Spent My Winter Holiday With a Fractured Ankle and Broken Shin Bone

December 23, 2021. My sister Robyn and her son, Kenji, and myself.  A trip to the "Flatirons," part of Green Mountain, in the Colorado Front Range of the Rockies, above Boulder, Colo.* 

In the words of a very funny and annoying TV character, "On my behalf," I didn't know we were actually going hiking, and so just wore my sneakers.  At 3:00 pm, I texted Joe Savino my whereabouts, as we'd climbed to 7,000 feet.  I was exhausted needless to say.  "Take it easy," said Joe, "stop if you begin to lose your breath.  This is a 'no hero' holiday!" His words as true as they were I heeded, but...

By 3:46 pm we'd made it to the top of the Flatirons.  We rested, looked around at the gullies and preponderance of trees, Kenji explained why we can populate Mars within his lifetime.  I was skeptical.  Knowing how we've had trouble landing on Mars with robotic ships, sending humans into space for years with no technology to get them back is a huge problem.

Kenji explaining

At 4:37 pm, Robyn texted Joe that I had slipped and hurt my ankle.  "[The] Team is coming up, everything is okay."  Like what would that mean?  The Team?  It was the Rocky Mountain Rescue Group (RMRG), based in Boulder, Colo.  It was impossible for me to stand let alone walk down the mountain.

At left, a photo taken by Robyn just after she got me to sit up and away from the sliding dirt and stones and pine needles.  I'd already had two brushes with fainting, and I'm as pale as a ghost.  Pathetic man, waiting for the cavalry.

Just after sunset, the RMRG, numbering about 17 professionals (from ER doctors, fire fighters to EMS techs, nurses) showed up with a stretcher, blanket, inflatable caste, and ropes. 

They subsequently escorted Robyn and Kenji down the mountain ahead of me so as to enable them to utilize the trail as best as could be expected since it was dark.

I was strapped into the stretcher, helmet placed on my head, covered in an orange blanket with two mountaineers on either side of the stretcher, two in the front, and one in the back; supported by others "behind the scene" with rope tied around boulders and thick tree trunks; they lifted and began to transport me down between the first and second hammers of the Flatirons.  

It was phenomenal the way they managed, between slipping and losing traction among the bushes and huge rocks, but I was never dropped; at times I was suspended at a right angles, but never felt in danger of displacement.  My view was continuously the night sky and branches and twigs from trees we "flew" through. The downhill trip lasted about two hours; my rescuers Dan, Mike, Trixie, Ashley, Carissa, Josh, among others brought me safely to the ground.  They transposed the stretcher upon a one-wheel mechanism and rolled me along the mountain's bottom, packed dirt, and rock to the waiting ambulance and other emergency vehicles.  And of course Robyn and Kenji.

                                                                            Epilogue

Yeah, yeah, so it's just one more life-changing event: multiple fractures in the ankle, multiple breaks in the tibia or fibula, whatever the shin bone's called.  "You ain't goin' nowhere," said my foot to my already altitude-sick brain.  Crutches.  Nonambulatory.  No cooking and drinking heartily like I promised Robyn and her husband Shane.  No investigating the goods offered by the Great State of Colorado.  But my friends and family came to the rescue, you see.  Aside from keeping me safe and warm and well-fed in freezing Erie, Colorado, Robyn and Shane took great care of me.  No end of good, interesting conversations and catchings up on our segmented, geographically and age-distanced growing up; gaps were filled in; revelations were mystified and laughed about; I lost 37 games of backgammon to Robyn; and then a few visits from my nephews added to a memorable and loving winter holiday.

And I was regaled with boxes of cookies and crossword puzzles from Theresa's sister Linda in New Jersey; a cheese cake from Junior's in Brooklyn, N.Y., sent by the archangel Joseph Centrone; post-trauma cushions and handy medical pants and a warm comfy sweater from sweet Lisa Strong in Culver City; donuts and brownies were sent by my Santa Monica peeps (Theresa & Joe) from Delicious Orchards in New Jersey; and my semi-retired self received a lovely batch of goods from my semi-former workplace, Extraordinary Families.

As of this posting, I've had two surgeries, hopped all over my sister Robyn's house, at times butt-crawling down the stairs and along the shiny wooden floors (see! I'm not ashamed) and finally made it back to Santa Monica, Calif., on Feb. 7th, and "am awaiting sentencing" and x-rays by my local orthopedist, and the prelude to physical therapy.  I have a knee scooter and still need crutches to get around.  My exasperation is continually countered by Joe's quoting: "Some day this war's gonna end."**

From left: Kenji and Robyn; a view from outside Robyn's home; Robyn and me before
 the ascent up the Flatirons. 

(*) The Flatirons (a/k/a Chattauqua Slabs) consist of conglomeratic sandstone of the Fountain Formation. Geologists estimate the age of these rocks as 290 to 296 million years; they were lifted and tilted into their present orientation between 35 and 80 million years ago, during the Laramide Orogeny. The Flatirons were subsequently exposed by erosion. Other manifestations of the Fountain Formation can be found in many places along the Colorado Front Range.

(**) From Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now," spoken by the character Colonel Kilgore.