A Story of When I Died

Now I haven't explored this website very much, but I'm here to tell a story. Not to write an article like "10 places to visit before you're 50" or " How to be a new artist/singer/dancer/painter." It seems like a lot of people are on here and want to be a writer for BuzzFeed or something, but the thing that piqued my interest was telling stories. If you know me, then you know that I am a big storyteller, and I love hearing stories too. I like the idea of this site as a place to write down my stories, almost like a catalog of my stories, and or life. So I hope you enjoy this one!

My name is Conor and I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. When I was about 16 my brother Wes took me on an amazing road trip out west with his two friends Adam and Rick. We went to Badlands, Big Horn, Yellowstone, Jackson Hole, and back. Now I have lots of little stories from this trip, but this one starts in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and it's about when I died.

Wes and his friends thought it would be a fun idea to go tubing down the snake river outside Jackson. I wasn't the biggest fan of this idea, because in my mind I could go tubing in Ohio, and I was out in the west and I wanted to do and see some stuff that I couldn't do when I was home, like climb mountains or see waterfalls. But they all wanted to go, so we packed up to go tubing. We parked Adam's car at the end of the river where we would get off the tubes, and we parked Brett's car at the start (Brett was another friend from Cincinnati who spontaneously joined us in Yellowstone for this road trip). So we hop on the river, and me being a kid, I was a little annoyed and butt-hurt. My brother and his friends were drinking and enjoying themselves, we would stop, and Brett, who is a stocky guy, is whipping out back flips and stuff. As we floated down the river, Wes, Adam, and I heard a weird sound. We look around, and above we see a long dead tree branch that is hanging high above over the river, and sitting on top was a Bald Eagle! It opens its wings and soars. That made the trip worth it for me, it was on my bucket list to see some bald eagles in nature, and that was just incredible to me. Bald eagles have some crazy wing span! Anyway, we float on and pass a bridge near a KOA. Adam, Wes, and I all acknowledged the KOA, because we thought it was dope that it was right on the river, But Brett had mentioned that we needed to get off past the bridge. So past the Koa, the river quite literally snakes around this cliff, and the water picks up a bit, Wes, Adam, and I all struggle to get off the tubes and onto this rocky shore, but we managed it okay.

We waited for Brett and Rick to catch up and Brett says "Wooooooohhhooo what are you doing?"

Wes said "aren't we supposed to get off here?"

Brett said, "Naah we got a long way to go, wooooo!"

So Wes and Adam hop back on their tubes, but I stopped to blow mine up a bit more. As I blew mine up, I saw them all go around the bend in the river to the other side of the cliff. I hop back on my tube and immediately knew the mini rapids were leading me straight to a pointed rock. My tube pops, and I slam all my arms and legs into the water to try to stop myself, somehow I manage to stop. My arms and legs are all cut up from forcing them into the rocks in the river. At this point I knew they hadn't seen me pop my tube, and there was no way they would hear me yelling for them, so my instinct is to head back to the KOA that we all acknowledged. I turn to head towards the road and I have to climb up what is essentially a dirt wall. I get up it and walk down this road covered in dirt and blood and head towards the KOA. When I get to the KOA, I walk in the front door; it's relatively busy with customers at the front desk and in the gift shop area. I only have swimming trunks on and I am still covered in dirt and blood. In my mind, if someone walks into a place of business like this then people would be worried or try to help or something, but no one bats an eye at me.

I walk up to the front desk, "Um, excuse me could I use your phone?"

The receptionist looks at me, rolls her eyes, and hands me the phone. I'm like what the fuck is going on with people here. I call my brother's phone thinking that it is in Adam's car at the end of the river, "Hey Wes it's Conor, my tube popped so I'm at the KOA just head this way when you get this." I clean myself up in the bathroom and sit on a bench outside and wait... and wait... and wait... The sun is going down, and it gets cold out there, keep in mind I'm only in my swimming trunks. Then my brother shows up with Brett. I see my brother let out a sigh of relief and fall back into the seat.

I hop in the car and say, "Damn finally! Took you guys long enough."

Everything is quiet as we drive to pick up Adam and Rick who are looking for me down at the river. They hop in the car screaming

"Conor he's alive!!!!"

"Oh my god Conor we thought you were dead!! It's time to celebrate, Conor's fucking alive!!!!!" We then drive into this valley-esque area of the random mountains, just some dirt road. We park for the night, and my brother grabs his sleeping bag and goes to sleep straight in the grass. Adam and Rick proceeded to celebrate me being alive. We all woke up the next morning, and realized we slept about 100 feet away from a full grown bull.

Now let's back things up a bit. This has all been from my perspective, Adam tells this story a lot differently. Let's start back at the bend in the river. They all float around the bend and are enjoying themselves, after a little while Wes is like "Wait guys where's Conor?"

Adam replies "I saw hip getting on the river at the bend."

So they all stop and start looking around the river. Rick and Brett hike back up to the bend in the river and Rick finds Conor's popped tube in the rocky shore.

They hike back to Adam and Wes, Rick says " Wes, I'm sorry man. I found Conor's popped tube, we don't know what happened."

At this point, the worst possible scenarios are running through everyone's heads especially Wes's. They just found Conor's tube on a rocky shore next to rapids, let that sink in your mind. They split up and are going up and down the river looking for Conor. Wes hikes up to the road, and was looking from the road where some chick pulls over and offers to help. She was a weird chick because she started to basically hit on Wes, he tells her to pull over and drop him off because his brother is missing and possibly dead! She kept circling back to him, but he just ignored her—he had other things on his mind. Eventually, Brett grabbed his car and picked up Wes and they took that turn into the KOA, which they had passed a couple of times, but finally they found Conor.

It's crazy to think that they all truly believe that I was dead. You hear stories of people getting into accidents out west all the time and dying, but you never think it would happen to someone you know. The funny thing was I knew that I was fine, I was just getting a little cold. I can't imagine what was running through their heads.

This is the first time I'm putting my stories into written form, I usually tell them in person, and I use a lot of character, and facial expressions when telling my stories, so I hope it is just as good on here! Thanks for taking the time to read it, I hope you enjoyed it!

P.S. The next day my brother said, you can't ever tell mom about this, if she found out that you almost died she would kill me! To this day my mum still doesn't know this story, I wonder if she will end up reading it here, hmm...

Rick

Adam

Wes