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"Friday, October 4, 2002 was a beautiful day. Dean and I had the day off so we went hiking in Charmlee Park in northern Malibu. The grass was yellow and hip high in some places, but the trails were well marked and the hiking was easy.
Drawn by the shade, we wandered into an oak grove. At the far end of the grove, there was a big, beautiful tree with wide sprawling branches and lots of open spaces. I’ve been climbing trees my whole life, but rarely had I seen one so perfect for the purpose. The branches were horizontal in places, and most were as thick as tree trunks.
I started up and, eventually, Dean joined me. The tree was as sturdy as it had looked. The branches bore my weight without so much as a sway.
At one point, I came to rest in a spot about 15 feet off the ground. I was standing still, each foot firmly planted on branches thicker than my thighs. I was listening to a story Dean was telling and my left hand was resting lightly on a smaller branch just behind my body.
In the middle of Dean’s story, the branch under my hand broke. Months later, after Dean retrieved the broken piece, I understood what happened: Though healthy on the topside, the 3-inch thick branch was rotted from underneath, something I couldn’t see from where I was standing.
When it broke, I started to fall backwards. I groped for something to hold, but there was nothing around me. And Dean was several feet out of reach. All I could do was fall. And all he could do was watch.
I fell virtually straight back, slowly tipping so that my head ended up lower than my feet. I felt as if I was moving in slow motion, distinctly aware of my body in space, puzzled by the length of time I was hanging in the air. And then the ground shot up and hit me. It was the first and only thing I hit. I’ll never forget the force of the impact.
I must have closed my eyes when I hit the ground and when I opened them, I was lying on my back looking up into the branches. I couldn’t breathe very well and it hurt a little, though I couldn’t tell from exactly where. I sensed my legs bent at the knees and in the air above my body, only something was very wrong: I could see my legs weren’t where I thought they were.
Dean scrambled down from the tree and dropped down next to me. On his way down, he was terrified he’d find me blood-soaked and unconscious. To his relief, I seemed fine. There was no blood, no immediate evidence that I was even hurt. And then I asked him where my legs were.
His stomach dropped. He said, “They’re right here,” touching my thigh. I couldn’t feel him. I reached down myself and felt something warm and soft. “What’s that?” I asked. “It’s your leg.”
I later found out that, when I hit the ground, my legs went over my head then dropped back to the dirt. That motion dislocated my back and crushed my spinal cord just above the middle of my back. The sense that I had of my legs above my body, a feeling that lasted for hours after the fall, must have been the last thing I felt before everything went numb.
Dean called 911 on my cell phone and, together, we tried to explain to the operator where we were. An EMT unit was dispatched and Dean reluctantly left me, running back to the trailhead to bring the unit in. I watched the branches above me and listened to the sirens echoing off the canyon. It was hard to breathe and my back hurt, but I was fairly calm. I thought to pray but as soon as I started, I realized I didn’t need to. I’d put my life in the hands of fate the moment I knew the fall was unavoidable. There was nothing to do but wait.
About 20 minutes later, Dean arrived with the paramedics. He had convinced them to radio ahead for a helicopter, an action that saved precious time getting me to treatment. Within minutes of both teams arriving, I was strapped to a spinal board and loaded, with Dean, into the helicopter, bound for UCLA Medical Center."
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