Remembering My Summer Solstice

Many will walk the labyrinth at Rye's Wainwright House as part of their "Summer Solstice Celebration" today at 6 p.m. followed by a fire ceremony, drumming and shamantic practices. And I'm planning on being there physically, but my mind and soul will be elsewhere because June 21 is the day that I "died" (in the clinical sense) on a hospital table in Alaska more years ago than I care to remember.

Actually I remember that day very well, June 21, 1982, the day of the summer solstice, the longest day of the year in more ways than one for me.

Here's what happened then and what has happened to me in Rye since many members of the community have helped me put my life back together.

Flash back to Alaska first. It is 1:22 in the afternoon. I am shooting the rapids on a raft hurtling down the Whiting River, 26 miles southeast of Juneau. It is the last half hour of a ten-day adventure travel writing trip that has given me more adventure than I'd signed on for, skiing glaciers, climbing mountains, panning for gold. And then it happens.

The noise comes first. The awful sound of a tree uprooting from its glacial anchor. I look up. It is coming right at me, a 100-foot cottonwood tree seemingly falling in slow motion. Its branches are outstretched like a leafy crucifix and I am hung up on what to do:

If I dive overboard into the icy water, I risk hypothermia, and will probably get hit anyway, and if I survive the impact, the wilderness guides will have to fish me out of the water. So I decide to stay in the raft and try to dodge as much of me out of the way as possible. I get my head and shoulders out of the way, but not my left leg. There is a hellacious crunch. And then there is a bloody hole where the front of my leg used to be.

Somehow I get to shore, where the other river adventurers get to me, and one of the guides tourniquets my leg. He asks me if I want a shot of morphine. I decline. I ask for my notebook instead and fill in the who, what, when, where, why and how of what will either be my story, my final words to my family or my obituary. I notice the steel frame of my raft has been bent out of shape and marvel at how much the human body can endure.

Luckily, the sea planes were already coming in to get us or I would have died in the wilderness. The seaplane takes off and brings me to Juneau, where there is an ambulance waiting for me at the pier. And then I am being wheeled into the operating room when a priest, who had been visiting the hospital, appears at my side and asks if I want to make a confession and if I want to be read my last rites.

So, I made what may go down as the world's longest confession because if I was going where I thought I was going, I didn't want to take any chances. Just before I went under the anesthesia, I begged the surgeons: "Whatever you do, don't cut off my leg, I'm a runner."

Sometime during the nearly ten hours of surgery my heart stopped. I remember that moment and being given a choice: to either succumb to the unbearable pain or go back to a life that would be unalterable different because of my injury.

I did know I had a lot of making up to do with my family after a lifetime of traveling around the world as a globe-trotting writer. So I chose to come back. The triage surgeons restarted my heart. I had come through the first of several life-saving leg surgeries at Juneau's Bartlett Memorial Hospital, with more to come at Manhattan's Lenox Hill Hospital after I was airlifted back to New York City, arriving just in time to see the fireworks going off on July 4.

Recovering in Rye

Various surgeons have since explained to me that my Alaskan tree basically bounced my knee down to my ankle, with my knee rebounding up again, severing all the arteries and destroying all the cartilage, anterior medial and posterior cruciate ligaments, more. The consensus. I needed an artificial knee. That still hasn't happened yet.

Years later, past the operations, the endless rehabilitation and learning to walk again, albeit always with a limp, I've met many people in Rye who have helped me recover.

Nora Le Morin, for example, taught me yoga postures, breathing techniques and meditation designed to develop strength, flexibility and a feeling of inner peace.

Liz Dottavio taught me Pilates, showing me how to combine stretching and isometric contractions to produce a smoother, longer body silhouette. Jayne Nye Trumm worked with me in various aerobic ways until I learned how to compensate for a left leg virtually destroyed from the knee down. And Maiju Savage helped me simplify the moves in the various Pilates disciplines.

And when I could function in land exercises, I went into the water where Vivat Salkultat drilled me on basic aquatic techniques and his associate, the ex-Moscow high jump champion known simply as Tamara, worked with me on stretch'n'flex moves in the pool, the water helping take the stress off my injured leg.

All of them are instructors at the Rye YMCA, and all helped me get back on my feet, more or less. I often jokingly said: "If I had been a horse, they would have shot me because my leg is no longer designed for weight bearing." But beyond the kidding, there was and is the constant pain, which only gets worse throughout the day.

Besides the cadre at YMCA, there is an unlikely group of "angels" of a different kind—the physical therapists at Rye Physical Therapy. Three times a week, they help me control the pain in a variety of ways, from shooting my knee and ankle with electricity to numb the pain to bending my near destroyed left leg in ways the paralyzed peroneal nerve will no longer let me.

And as all that happens, they get to know me and I get to know them: Matt Hyland, for example, is a perennial Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots fan who teaches at Mercy College. His partner, Frank Finuoli, is an ex-seminarian, who delights in talking about Italian cooking, his wife, his son, the budding track star, and his daughter, a softball ace. My lead therapist, Claire Coolbeth, a red-haired triathlon runner, horsewoman, and green-thumbed flower lover, keeps me posted on her latest times and fills me in on her Rye training and swimming runs that usually start around 5:30 in the morning before work. Kim Cosetti talks about her young son. Carla Da Silva, who keeps my leg iced properly, is the reigning Zumba queen.

And Becca Hyland always seems to be able to squeeze me in for an appointment when the pain is really bad. And my wife, Stephanie, our four children and our four grandchildren help me realize how much I have to be thankful for, pain or not, day in and day out.

So a lot goes through my mind about that fated Alaska trip and the summer solstice day I "died." A lot more will come to mind, as it does every year since June 21, 1982, which is why I plan to be at the Summer Solstice Celebration at Wainwright, where among other things, I will say a silent prayer of gratitude for being alive another year and being part of a community that has helped me along the way.