Helping hands - stuck in the dark!

As I write this, I’m still quite razzled from my recent experience, but relieved that everything turned out alright. On Sunday, I attended Cranefest in Bellevue, Michigan, about an hour’s drive from where I live. The festival was quite wonderful, with lots to see both in terms of birds in the surrounding area, and a lively assortment of events, booths, and displays. I personally enjoyed seeing the evening flight of the Sandhill Cranes over the water, though I couldn’t get a real close view of any of the birds with my binoculars.

The festival ended around the time the sun was just starting to set. I got back to my car in the parking lot, made sure all my items were packed up, buckled in and turned the key. To my dismay, I got nothing but some sputtering and clicking noises. At this point other festival goers were streaming around my car in the parking lot to get to their own cars. The sun was setting fast, and I could feel panic starting to set in. I had one lifeline - my cellphone in my jacket pocket! Unfortunately, I had forgotten to charge the battery, which was of course as dead as my car.

I managed to borrow a kind stranger’s cellphone and call home, but it would take at least an hour for someone to get out there and pick me up, and I would have to wait in my car for them to arrive. Panicking, I thought to ask someone if he could give my car engine a jump start, in case that was the problem. He was kind enough to agree, but even after several charges, my battery wasn’t getting any livelier. This man told me he would talk to someone on the event coordination team to make sure they knew I was out here. At this point I saw little choice but to stay tight in my car.

By now the sun was almost completely down, and attendees and booth-owners alike were packing up and driving their cars off into the distance. It was a matter of minutes before mine was one of the last cars left.

You, gentle reader, may not be aware of this, but the juvenile Sandhill Crane has a very distinctive call, which, while funny and amusing sounding most of the time, becomes transformed into a haunting and terrifying alien death squawk when one is sitting alone in a cold, dead car in the pitch black of night in the middle of the wilderness with trees on all sides. I think this is one of those primal instinctive fears that are ingrained in every person’s psyche, along with being buried alive and laughing clown dolls. I hope few of you ever have to be lost or alone in the woods, although as nature lovers, it’s probably more likely to happen to us than to others.

I’m not sure how many seconds it took before I became a gibbering, trembling, emotional wreck, I think I made it alright for about 2-3 minutes before every shadow around my car started looking like a mountain lion about to pounce, and the sound of croaking baby Sandhills all around me stopped sounding like “Gwack Gwack Gwack” and more like “Eat the human, Eat the human, Eat the human!” I’m lucky it was dark out because I probably looked like quite the fool, stumbling out of my car and sprinting back towards the area where the vendors and staff were packing up the last of the festival supplies.

Purely by coincidence, I happened to walk past a group of people who were talking about someone who was left here with a broken car engine. I was saved! I didn’t even soil myself in those 3-4 minutes or anything. The staff for the event were very very kind and very helpful, and they made very sure that I was taken care of. They told me in all the years they’ve done the Cranefest, they’ve never once had an incident of anyone getting lost or hurt. I feel truly grateful that such dedicated people were there to lend a helping hand to a stranger in need. A local repairman came out and gave my car another extra jump, adjusted something somewhere (you can tell how much I know about cars) and the car started right up and I was ready to go home.

The moral of the story, I suppose, is to trust in the kindness of strangers when you’re in a time of crisis. You’ll be surprised what can happen.

Oh, and always charge your cellphone.

Posted by the novice on 10/14 at 05:33 PM