Reality Mirrors Fiction – for reals!

Sometimes reality mirrors fiction. I’m thinking of Jules Verne who invented cool contraptions in his novels written in the late 1800s that are now real.  Or, as in this week, my novel The Archer’s Perspective.  Let me explain. The Archer’s Perspective begins when the main character, her name is Piper, is riding her four-wheeler in the Sierra Madre Mountains of southern Wyoming and gets hit in the shoulder with an errant arrow.  She and her husband are forty miles from anywhere and she needs medical help.  In my story, she stays brave, and the sheriff’s department and a helicopter out of Rawlins are involved.

So now, the reality of my week just past:  we have been camping at the trailhead that leads to a wilderness area (the exact same place Piper was riding!).  It’s so beautiful here, calm and peaceful.  Riding the trails on our four-wheelers has been fun, and so has just sitting.  We’ve had an elk, lots of deer, and a fox walk right through our camp, the wind sighs peacefully above us through the trees, some of which are beginning to turn vivid yellow (also just like in Archer’s Perspective!).  We haven’t been totally isolated.  Twice friends have come up to spend time with us, and nearly every day someone we don’t know comes and parks nearby, waves hello then grabs a day pack and sets off into the woods for a hike. (This is a trailhead!)  Also added to our camping experience has been a large herd of sheep who are grazing nearby.  The sheep wagon is parked right next to us, though that isn’t where the herder stays, it’s only  the base camp for supplies. We’ve met and talked with the people who own the sheep when they come to bring supplies to the sheepherder, and we’ve met the herder himself.  His name is Oscar, he’s from Peru, and between my really malo Spanish and his limited English, we’ve gotten along famously.  Not that we see him or the sheep often, but just once in a while. The occasional chiming of the sheep bells has added to the fun of the trip.

So here’s when The Archer’s Perspective comes in…Several days ago, a sheriff’s truck drove up.  Karl’s mind raced for a minute, deciding if he’d done anything to occasion his visit, and was at once relieved and then alarmed to find out that the reason the sheriff had come calling is that Oscar had somehow found a signal with his cell phone from deep in the forest and called for help.  The connection was crackly and unclear, but the bottom line was that he’d been hurt and needed help.  The officer told Karl that an ambulance and helicopter were on their way, ETA  close to an hour.  Without hesitation, Karl did what Karl does.  He jumped on his four-wheeler and went in search of Oscar.

This is turning into a long story, so I will abbreviate it.  Since we’d been riding that road, we knew where Oscar’s camp was – over three and a half miles in on a tricky, rocky two-track, 4-wheel drive only road.  Karl decided to go there first, and thankfully, that is where he found Oscar. How Oscar’d gotten himself there from where he was hurt is beyond my imagining and my command of Spanish, but courage and fortitude gives us strength beyond what we’d expect.  Karl found him in his tent, suffering with the pain of several very broken ribs and a deep gash on his hand.  Rendering what first aid and encouragement he could, Karl kept an eye on Oscar, and stayed with him until reinforcements came.  Once the EMTs arrived, Karl went out to a nearby meadow to help guide the chopper in and also to secure and calm the horses who were in the area.  Soon, Oscar was tucked safely on board the chopper and then on his way to the hospital.

This story has a happy ending and it isn’t going to take another two hundred and some pages before you find out what it is (like my novel!).  Two evenings later, Oscar and the owner of the sheep dropped by so that he could get some necessities from the sheep wagon.  He looked a bit tired and pale, but seemed alright.  Or at least, as alright as you can be with mangled ribs and stitches in your hand. He’ll take a while to heal, but all’s well that ends well.

A postscript to the story is this:  the helicopter had some trouble finding the meadow where they needed to land and flew around these mountains at a low altitude for probably thirty minutes before locating the right meadow.  They flew right over the sheep, repeatedly.  Apparently, sheep do NOT like helicopters and they reacted by running in all sorts of directions.  So now, we have a couple new herders in the area who are working very long hours with their horses and dogs trying to gather the sheep together. We’ve had sheep all around us in small bands.  Be assured, Karl’s been doing his part!