Alaska Miracle part 4

I don't know how long I was asleep, but when I woke up it was dark and very hot inside the small confines of the camper shell. I turned off the heater and started to think about what had happened to me.

Was it real or a dream? There was only one way to tell, see if the canoe was still under the bridge.

The wind was still blowing very hard as I grudgingly stepped out of the warm camper, though this time I had on my raincoat. When I got to the bottom of the embankment I saw the canoe right where I had tied it to a small sapling. In the canoe was the one duck I had shot, that proved it was real. Now my head really started spinning!! How had I made it back against a forty or fifty mile an hour wind? After I had passed out? Was it God, an angel, maybe aliens? This was really messing with my mind! I put the canoe back on the top of the camper, and decided to spend the night here as the wind was still blowing very hard and the road was covered with an icy slush.

When I awoke the next morning the storm had passed, so I started on my way back home. Looking at the river I noticed it had risen about three feet and was moving along quite swiftly.This was common for rivers and streams in Alaska, as it was a mountainous region and these waterways drained vast areas.

Along the way home I noticed that all the streams were high and fast. It was about nine in the morning when I pulled into the mobile home park where I lived. I had just stepped out of my truck when I heard a woman's screaming down by the creek in back of the park, this creek usually about thirty feet wide, was now a raging torrent about sixty feet wide. I ran over to see what the woman's problem was. As I got closer I could hear her shouting, "My little girl has fallen in the water!"

I started running down the creek side and after about one hundred yards I saw the child's face down in the current, as fast as the creek was flowing I knew I had to get ahead of her to have a chance of reaching her before she reached a rocky rapid area that would probably be fatal.

Taking off my jacket and boots as I ran, I got about ten yards ahead of her and jumped in the water, WOW! THIS WATER IS COLD!! I swam as hard as I could, and after what seemed like hours ( probably 20 seconds ) I had her in my grasp. Swimming hard I made it to shore just before the rapids, which could have been fatal for both of us. The water was so cold, even spending less than one minute in it, hypothermia was affecting my arms and legs. It was hard just to crawl out of the water. I immediately saw the child was not breathing, so I laid her down on my jacket and started CPR. After about ten repetitions she coughed up a bunch of water and started crying. Wrapping her in my jacket, I shouted to her mom to get in my truck! The hospital was only a few minutes from where I lived. We made it there quickly, and soon the girl was in the care of a doctor. A half hour later the mom came out and said her child was going to be fine, and I might as well go home as her husband was coming to pick them up.

On the way home, my head was really spinning, was this just a coincidence, or an act of God? I will never really know for sure, but since then I have become a devout believer in God!

A short time later, as I entered the house, my wife asked rather angrily, "Where the hell have you been?!"

"Don't ask, " I said, "You will never believe it anyway!!"