GUARDIAN ANGEL
I remember reading a book by Frank Topping called All the Days of my Life, in particular a chapter named To Seek God is to Find Him. This eloquently demonstrated for me, how often we fail to recognise God because of our preconceived idea of what the God we are seeking ought to be like, and fail to find the image of God we have created in our own minds.
Frank Topping told the story of a Rabbi walking through an Israeli settlement, when a sudden and violent storm swept over, causing a flash flood, as sometimes happens in Israel. The Rabbi was soon up to his ankles in water, when a taxi came along and the driver shouted to him to climb in quickly before the flood got any worse. To which the Rabbi replied "It's all right, I'm not afraid, I trust in God and he will rescue me." So the taxi drove on and soon the Rabbi found himself up to his knees, at which point a big army truck drove up and a soldier cried out for him to jump aboard before he got into serious difficulties. Once again the Rabbi replied "It's all right, I'm not afraid, I trust in God and he will rescue me."
The water continued to rise and soon it was up to the Rabbi's neck, and a helicopter patrol flew overhead. The pilot shouted down that he would lower a rope to winch the Rabbi up, but once again, the Rabbi refused assistance, convinced his God wouldn't let him down in his time of need.
Well, you can guess the rest. In a short time, the water was over the Rabbi's head, and a few minutes later, in heaven, there was one very cross Rabbi! He turned to the Almighty and said "All these years I have told people that if they trust in you, you won't let them down. So where were you when I needed you?" To which God replied, "Where was I? I came with a taxi, I drove up in a truck, and I flew over in a helicopter!"
The Rabbi's problem was that he didn't see God in any of these people, because of his preconceived notion of what He ought to be. Twice I have been reminded of this story when I faced similar situations where I believe God sent a guardian angel. It would be easy to pass these off as coincidence, but I believe that if we want to find God, we don't have to look far because he is all around us, with us in everything we do.
The first story begins with a trip in a rowing boat to an outlying rocky island off the coast of Embleton. Louise (12 at the time) had a friend staying with us at the bungalow, and they were both keen to make this trip to Outcar. Alice had one day left, so it was either go then, or forget the idea.
We had that rowing boat for a lot of years, but only made a very few trips to Outcar, as the conditions have to be more or less perfect. The boat was a small, home made, wooden craft which can hold 5 children or 4 adults, but it was never very stable and sat fairly low in the water. Further out to sea there is quite a swell, even on a calm day, and the boat could take in a lot of water trying to land on rocky islands. It also has to be a reasonably low tide for the island to be out of water in the first place.
This particular day wasn't ideal, but it was our only chance so we decided to go for it. Various delays meant that by the time we actually launched the boat, the tide was further in than I would have liked, with waves getting bigger and the wind (blowing out to sea) getting up. Rather than risk putting Alice, Louise and my two younger daughters in the boat at the same time, I asked Rosie and Emily to walk out across the Emblestones and wait, whilst I rowed Alice and Louise to Outcar. I planned to leave them, collect Rosie and Emily, row back and then do the whole thing in reverse, this time letting Alice and Louise walk back from the Emblestones, while I left the younger two on Outcar waiting for my return to take them back to shore.
At best, this was an ambitious plan, even in good conditions. I got to Outcar easily enough, the wind helping me on my way, but the boat took in a fair bit of water when we landed. (The children did all have life jackets and wetsuits on, while I just wore a wetsuit as there weren't enough life jackets to go round.) After a few photographs I started to row to the Emblestones to collect Emily and Rosie and it was then I began to realise I might have bitten off more than I could chew! It was much harder to row in the opposite direction, the wind was getting up even more and the tide was coming in relentlessly. Emily and Rosie were waiting at the furthest out point of the Emblestones and after they were on board I set off back towards Outcar, trying not to show how worried I was getting about the whole venture.
Suddenly, we noticed a motor boat heading towards Alice and Louise. After consulting with them, it changed direction and I realised it was coming towards me. My heart sank when I it got nearer and I saw the letters "RNLI" on the side. Pulling up alongside us, one of the three men on board asked me if we were all right. Sure, I told him. And did we think we were going to make it in "that thing"? Well ..... At that point, the crew said that in their opinion I should turn back for the shore whilst they fetched the kids from Outcar.
I immediately felt overwhelming relief - while I would have been loathe to admit we were in trouble, I was getting seriously worried and felt people would think me very irresponsible having possibly put the lives of 4 children at risk. I started rowing towards the shore - no easy task by this time, with the wind blowing gustily in the opposite direction. Alice and Louise were picked up by the inshore rescue boat, which also took Rosie and Emily on board as it passed me on the way back to the shore. Emily was so eager to experience the RNLI boat she almost capsized ours in her rush to climb aboard! After dropping the children off, the boat came back to make sure I was OK, and though it was tempting to say I was too tired to row any more and let the RNLI tow me back in, I was determined that while they might have decided I was irresponsible, they weren't going to think I was weak!
A postscript to this is that the next day I went for a long run on a boiling hot day and got very dehydrated. On the way home through Craster at an RNLI market stall I begged someone to top my water bottle up and guess what? Same guy selling cakes as skippering the lifeboat the day before! He must have decided I was totally incompetent by this time, as he told me that they'd been alerted to our predicament the day before by a call from someone at Newton, saying two girls were stranded on Outcar without a boat.
The second tale begins with the 1999 Cheviots Challenge, which is a lesson in what happens when complacency sets in and mistakes are compounded. I was doing this event with an old friend, Fred. Unfortunately when I visited the loo prior to the start, a daddylonglegs (which I hate) was on the wall, inches away from me. In more of a hurry than usual, I made a quick exit, only realising about a mile into the walk that I'd left my stick in the toilets back at the start. Rather than wait for me, Fred elected to "walk on slowly" something that afterwards, from his finishing time, it became obvious he hadn't done.
On returning to the start I was greeted with the information that my stick had been taken to checkpoint two - a wasted journey! In a hurry to catch up with Fred again, I pressed on and missed a vital turn off to the left. Of course Fred had the route bearings we'd worked out, and although I did have map and compass, I only had a very scrappy description of the best way to locate checkpoints. By the time I realised I'd gone way too far in the wrong direction, I was in danger of missing the cut off time for CP 1, so tried to take a short cut across the Otterburn ranges. The flags weren't flying as it was August Bank Holiday Saturday, but it's not the easiest area to walk in a straight line. There are either army built roads (which have a habit of suddenly petering out), or wasteland which is very difficult to cross, with the added danger of unexploded missiles lying in wait! I could see where I wanted to be, but could I hell see how to get there! Gulleys and crevasses, uncrossable rivers and the dangers of walking in deep grass where you couldn't see what you were standing on, meant that I soon got way off track and realised I couldn't possibly make CP 1, so set about trying to reach CP 2 before that also closed. Well, to cut a long story short, this went from bad to worse and I ended up more and more off course, as CP closing times came and went, meaning that I was constantly changing direction, aiming for a new rendezvous. I didn't see a soul. It was a boiling hot day and I was grateful I had at least brought enough liquid to keep me from getting dehydrated for quite a few hours. By this time, of course, my failure to turn up at checkpoints had been noticed and was starting to cause concern. The event is run by the Northumberland Search and Rescue, so they're on the ball for anyone potentially getting into difficulties.
Fred was tracked down as my "partner" for the Challenge and stopped by the Search and Rescue team leader at one of the checkpoints for 40 minutes, while they tried to work out what might have gone wrong. Emily got a phone call at home on the off chance I'd had some sort of argument with Fred and decided to go back to Newcastle! With Fred telling them I was "very fit, with good navigation skills and knew these hills well", the organisers were no doubt concerned I'd broken an ankle and was lying injured somewhere!
Meanwhile, I was running out of ideas. Hot, tired and not knowing which direction to walk in, I sat down by a stream to cool off. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a van drove up and a man got out and headed towards me. Somewhat alarmed, I stood up and was quickly assured I had nothing to worry about, he "just wanted to show me these pictures"! It turned out he was a retired postmaster from Harbottle and was fired up with a campaign to prove how many old houses the army had demolished to build roads on the ranges. He seemed unable to grasp that I was lost and had been missing from an event for 7 hours, having failed to turn up at any of the checkpoints, but he did agree to drop me within walking distance of CP 6 which I felt I should be able to reach before the closing time. It was also the high point of the event, the summit of Windy Gyle and I felt if I at least climbed this mountain I would feel I'd done something worthwhile.
Reaching the checkpoint, I was suddenly overcome with shyness and a reluctance to announce my presence, guessing at the fuss it would trigger. I busied myself taking pictures of the trig point until I was eventually approached and in the end explained who I was. Predictably, there was an immediate furore, with radio messages flying around, and after a wait while I was reunited with my stick and questioned about the missing hours, I was able to continue with the back markers along the rest of the route. When Fred heard the news I'd turned up on Windy Gyle, he'd already finished the event in an incredibly fast time, particularly as it included the enforced delay at CP 8.
It's worth pointing out incidentally, that my entry number for the challenge that year was 13!!
Although straying off the purpose of this article a bit, I would like to take the opportunity to say how marvellous both the Search and Rescue and the RNLI volunteers were on each occasion. I was never accused of being negligent or irresponsible (which I had been) and on both occasions the only concern was whether I was OK. In fact, I was treated in a way that I'm not sure I would have been able to return had the roles been reversed!
But back to the guardian angel .... to this day I'm convinced that if we're lucky we have someone up there watching over us. Like the Rabbi, I trust in the God I believe in but I'm not looking for some ethereal vision. In a boat half a mile out to sea, God came to my rescue in a lifeboat and he drove onto the Otterburn ranges in a van. *Fate* or *God*? Take your pick!