Webster’s Dictionary  defines fear as expecting or worrying about something bad or unpleasant.  I’ve never been a fan of the unpleasant.  I’ve been forced into way too many haunted houses and have had the living daylights scared out of me.  Up until the end of this summer, I thought that I understood what fear was.  Until one day when the good Lord decided I was due for a life lesson.

It was back at the end of August.  I had been working for my dad’s logging company full time in the summer for the last three years.  Up until July, I had only ever run the skidder for a significant amount of time.  However, we had just gotten a new machine that was in need of an operator.  This was the Komatsu tracked feller buncher, it looks like an excavator that you see on construction sites.  It resembles a big yellow box with a boom coming off of it sitting on two wide metal tracks.  The boom has a saw at the end that cuts the trees off.  This was the newest machine that Dad owned and I was the one given the chance to run it.  I was so proud and excited to be trusted to control that behemoth.  By mid-August, I still wasn’t too comfortable with the machine.  I was terrible about cutting the stumps too high, and the skidder operators resented me for it.  I was bad about laying the trees down in a good position to be processed and it was getting me down that I wasn’t improving at all behind the controls. 

Finally, I had one day where things were running smoothly.  The trees fell where I wanted them to,  I was cutting stumps at the right height,  I was getting the hang of the machine.  It never crossed my mind that I would experience what real fear is.  Bone chilling, am I going to die fear.

It was right around six thirty when all hell decided to break loose.  I had just finished cutting at an angle around the side of a hill.  Mistake number one.  I had just received a phone call from my dad telling me it was time to head home for the night.  I turned the cab one hundred eighty degrees and headed back down the hill.  Mistake number two.  I crawled the machine back to the steepest edge on the hill, I then stopped to clean up some small pieces of wood that were in my way.  I knew what I was about to attempt was going to be sketchy at best.  It was the quickest option though, and I wanted to go home.  Mistake number three.  I crept the machine to the edge.  I waited for it to teeter and hit ground with the front of the track.  The machine slowly rocked forward.  It finally reached the point where I knew it wasn’t going to stop.

The machine started to tip straight forward, so I slammed the buncher head into the dirt in a desperate attempt to save the machine.  It was too late.  To my dismay, I watched the head buckle to the side and the boom collapse inward toward the cab.  At that moment  I experienced fear for the first time in my life.  True bone chilling fear.  A fear that grabs a hold and doesn’t let go.  I know that all this happened in less than two seconds, but I had time to thoroughly assess what was going on.  I knew that the ceiling was lined with metal bars and that on touchdown I was going to get to know them pretty well.  My mind flashed back to the conversation I had with my grandma the night before about how I should wear a seatbelt in the woods.  I wish I had.  In those two seconds, all I could think about was: this is it.  This is how I’m going to go out.  That’s the story of Jack and it was not the ending I had hoped for.  That was the first time in my life I had ever thought I was going to die.  I have never yelled so loud in my life.  My final thought was, what if I don’t wake up. 

Smackdown.

My eyes popped open.  I had been thrown from my seat, my head was bleeding, and my shoulder was sore.  It took me a second to get my thoughts back together.  I reached over and hit the emergency stop switch and I now was faced with the challenge of escaping this metal death trap.  First I called my dad and told him what happened so he could start the mile trek back into the woods.  My ears were ringing and I had a headache like I had never felt before.  I tried the regular door to the cab which was now directly above me, but it was too heavy to lift.  I had to look for another option.  I knew with the machine laying on its side that a fire could soon start and burn up the machine with me in it.  The only other option I saw was the windshield.  I undid the emergency screws at the four corners of the window and used my boot to kick it out.  It fell to the ground with a thud.  I climbed down out of the cab, took five steps and collapsed.  I just sat there and stared at the overturned machine.

Many people enjoy an adrenaline rush from roller coasters and haunted houses.  They like being scared.  However, they always know that they really are safe.  When that machine rolled over there was no guarantee that I’d be ok.  I was fortunate enough to walk away from that wreck with only some nasty bruises.  If I had been completely knocked out  I wouldn’t have been able to call for help.  I wouldn’t have known if a fire had started and been able to escape.  I don’t get scared by most little things anymore; because for me, fear became all too real that day.

Works Cited
"Fear." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 3 Nov. 2016.