My knee vs the Tree.

What started off as a proactive good idea certainly went pear-shaped... Big fat swollen pear-shaped to be exact.
To explain...
Often, after leaving our chosen campsite the next morning, within 10 minutes or so we may pass another, even better, spot & both think, "Damn, if only we'd found this last night..!".
With that in mind, the other evening, not finding anything all that great, Tom & I had ended up pushing on another 3 or so miles. Eventually, admitting defeat, we came up off the trail and started to clear off a couple of level looking areas to make our own.
After 10 minutes of effort, I was pretty happy with my patch of moss, having gotten rid of pretty much every stick, log, twig & pinecone that had been on it.
Next came the "checking of the levelness", where I put down my groundsheet & lay on it to see how it feels. Laying there, feeling happy that I was flat, level & not going to slide anywhere in the night, I gazed up at the canopy above me, & realized unfortunately there was a rather large dead pine tree at 45 degrees right overhead. It had died & been blown over some time ago, but the top was caught in another not-so-well-looking tree, so was potentially able to come crashing down at any time. Given that the previous nights had seen the wind pick up a bit, I didn't want to chance it coming loose, fall, & land on me in the night, most likely wrecking my tent & doing me dome serious damage too.

I decided to see if I could aid it in it's completion of hitting the ground, so started to give it a shake near the base of the 10 inch trunk. About 40 feet long, it wasn't huge, but it "weren't no sapling" either. I was just about to give up trying solo & ask Tom for a hand when the brittle dead tip finally snapped & it started to fall the remaining 45 degrees. Quickly!
I wasn't under it, but it must have slid slightly towards me... & as I backstepped further away, I caught my right heel in the soft moss... & the damn thing caught me real good, spang right across the top of my right knee!!
Lots of rolling around, swearing & cold water later I finally got up, able to walk OK, but throbbing & sore. Yanking the damn timber off my tent site, I finally got my tent up, loaded my self up on "Vitamin-I" (Ibuprofen) & actually slept pretty good.

The next morning I felt surprisingly good, & we got going fine, although I was a bit swollen & stiff in the thigh & knee... Untll we stopped for 2nd breakfast when I took a look & noticed my leg was by then like a melon!
Strangely, it was then I went into delayed shock. I was sitting on a log when I suddenly lost all taste of my pop-tart, all sound went away, & my vision went like that of a thermal imaging camera, only in shades of grey.
"Aah crap! I'm bloody going into shock!" I said to Tom, who was wondering why the hell I was deciding to lay on the cold ground... Man, that sucked, but after 5 minutes of laying there, everything went back to normal, & I could enjoy the rest of my frosted blueberry pastry!
4 days of walking later, my knee is a good shade of blueberry itself, but has gone down & the near-o & zero we are taking here in Cascade Locks has done a lot of good.
Next... Washinton! 500 miles to go!!
Hopefully smoothly & injury free too!
RWK
Recuperating!