there was a deafening buzz in my head and a zap of painful electric shock to my left arm as I unwittingly brushed my wet jacket against one of the lines. I was literally blown backwards out of the tree. In slow motion, my limp body bounced down one branch after another, on its descent from the tree. After the horrible shock, my mind and body shut off like a circuit breaker tripping with an overload. I seemed to watch my body acting like a rag doll dropped from the top, flailing on its way down. From the blankness of mind came only one repeated line, what I was trying to say to my friend, like cartoon thought balloons coming out of my head, “I’m dead…I’m dead…I’m dead!”
Finally, as time stretched like salt-water taffy, having hit eight or ten branches, I collided with the ground, thankfully cushioned by decades of pine needle debris. A pause, and I started to breathe, after what felt like an hour, but was less than twenty seconds. Very stunned, I stood up, oddly first taking notice that my fly was still unzipped. Breathing in I smelled the dreadful stench of burnt flesh. I kept saying, “I’m dead, I’m dead.”
Bob must have made haste down his tree and came over to see what had happened. He looked at me and said, “Hey Marc, you’re not dead!”
As life came back to my limbs and my mind awakened, my death-thought suddenly inverted like a high diver doing a flip, and I said “Holy hell! I’m alive, I’m alive!”
I stood up, taking stock of my situation, moving my arms and legs to see if anything was broken. Amazingly everything moved, nothing broken, hardly even a scratch. My limp body acted like rubber and simply bounced down the tree limbs like a sack filled with tennis balls.
I felt oddly different, having my first brush with death. Something had changed. I understood the apprehension I had felt earlier, it was looming like a thunderstorm that was now dissipating, the dark clouds breaking up. The horror of this experience was being replaced by the warm glow of realizing I was indeed alive. I am alive! I thought.
Going back to our campsite, we both told our teacher what had happened in an overlapping, excited staccato fashion, as though spitting it out quickly would bring him on board faster, which seemed very important—to have an adult learn what had just happened.
Looking very concerned, he asked me to take my jacket off, with its row of neat burn holes up the arm to the shoulder. With my jacket removed, those same holes could be seen on my skin—burned through the flesh. He cleaned the burns and applied ointment and small Band-Aids to the burns, but as there was nothing else wrong with me, that was the extent of the first aid. I asked him if he thought there was damage to my brain? With a steady look and a kind smile, he reassured me that I looked fine.
Now with that incident over, it was time to move on to the next adventure: as sunset was nearing, our teacher said to load up the cars to head over to the sand dunes nearby. So off we were again in our caravan of Land Rover, VW, and Ford, to the designated dunes.
Arriving, we all jumped out and ran to the top of the sand dunes. Still shaky from the whole very recent experience, I still had the presence of mind to bring my camera. My friends were busy scrambling around hooting and kicking up sand. Then a group found the top and jumped off. I captured a few frames from the side with my beloved Minolta A5 film camera, but that wasn’t particularly interesting. The sun was setting behind them, so I went down about twenty-five feet below them on the sand dune. With a flash (a good one this time) I had a vision to capture them in the air from the bottom as they jumped off—with the sun behind, they would be perfectly silhouetted.
Quickly assuming my role, like a director on a movie set, I called out directions:
“Guys, back up over the crest of the sand dune and when I yell ‘run!’, run as fast as you can together and jump in the air when I yell ‘jump!’ ”
Sensing my purpose, I had their attention instantly, which is no small feat if you’ve ever tried to focus the attention of a group of twelve-year-olds busy playing. With the group at the ready, I moved into position, focused my camera at the right spot, I set the shutter to 1/125th of a second, aperture f/8.
Following my orders perfectly, they backed up and on my command to run, came charging toward me, like calling “action!” as a director. Then, as they hit the top of the dune I yelled “jump!” and they took off in the air. I anticipated their motion exactly and was able to capture them in a perfect arc. My visualization was complete and that moment captured forever in this one image, their joy of being alive and free, resonating with my recent feeling of being near death—then suddenly being alive and creating this split second that has lasted a lifetime.
I pressed the shutter at the exact “decisive moment” to capture their graceful motion, a split second later it all fell apart into random motion.
Many years later, Caroline, on the far left with her hands in the air, wrote to me about her experience:
“I was twelve years old, just coming into my adult consciousness, and experiencing one of the happiest years I’d ever known, in the wonderful community that was our class and our school. It was a glorious feeling to jump off the edge of the dune, all together, and that was captured exquisitely by Marc. A month or so later, the photo appeared on the cover of our student-made yearbook, enshrining that moment as an emblem for our class. It became for me a symbol of one of the happiest times of my life.
“As I look at the photo now, those feelings come back vividly, although with some perspective. Part of the thrill of jumping was that we were together, on our own, and the moment was caught by one of us—creating an expression of our new selves by ourselves, with no adults involved. The ensuing years have been rewarding in many ways, but rarely as carefree and joyful as that moment. In the right atmosphere, surrounded by the right people, a spirit can soar.”
It was strange to move so rapidly from dark to light, but as I found many times later, not totally unusual to find a near-death experience springing into a fully alive and fully aware state.
Life Lessons from This Experience
1.Look up before you climb a tree that’s cut off at the top. Translated: pay close attention to your environment dude!
2.No matter how you get there, being fully alive opens the doors to creativity.
3.Visualize your art.
4.But then act to make it happen.
5.As a subtext of this—be willing to direct people to bring about your vision: Don’t leave it to chance.
6.Then be fully prepared with your tools so you don’t miss the opportunity.
7.Capture your art at the decisive moment.
How Do You Strengthen Your Visualization “Muscles”?
I didn’t write “learn how to visualize,” because you already know how to do it. As it turns out, the ability to visualize is “standard equipment” from our earliest age. In fact, when we are kids it might be its strongest (the previous story as an example), and alas, as we grow older we often hear excuses for not being able to imagine and create as we once did. But the visualization ability of the mind is powerful. It just may need some regular exercise to get back in shape.
Can you remember the wonder you had as a child and the flexibility your imagination had? It’s that ability we want to focus on at this
