A few weeks ago, I was in an accident.

I meant to start writing this blog much sooner (in July), but life on the road gets hectic (I procrastinated), so forgive me for beginning under such dismal circumstances. It seems worth mentioning though, that I did have three pretty pleasant months of traveling around before all this happened.

The accident occurred on Friday, October 6th. I woke up early that morning, awakened by the sound of loudly speaking anglers moving their boats around the campground. I rarely stay anywhere so populated, but I was finally heading south after spending six weeks on the Olympic peninsula in Washington and it was a convenient place to overnight.

I dressed, raised the stabilizer jacks on my trailer, and set out. My breakfast was a protein bar and a bottle of 5 hour energy (culinary sophistication at its finest).

After 30 minutes of driving, I was already bored. I’d driven several hours the day before, and was not looking forward to the next 11+ hours of painfully slow towing it would take to get to Moab. I put in my headphones and called my sister.

We chatted for about 40 minutes or so before it started to rain. The precipitation was fairly brief. Everything was fine. I was heading east on I-84, driving over a stretch of road that I didn’t realize was actually a bridge (it blended in with the rest of the roadway).

Suddenly, my trailer started to fishtail. I tapped my breaks in an attempt to regain control. The fishtailing worsened. My rig began swerving over both lanes of highway between the rock face at one side and the concrete barrier at the other. The stilted way it snaked back and forth reminded me of the ball inside a pinball machine after its been hit by a side lever. I was no longer steering, knowing if I overcorrected, I'd only further exacerbate things.

“Katie—,” I had started speaking to tell my sister what was happening.

I stopped, interrupted by the thought that if anyone was driving near my rig, my trailer would very likely knock them into the concrete barrier on my left. “Oh god,” I felt my jaw clench.

I panicked. I had been relatively calm until that point—threats to my mortality have never phased me (I'll perish when it's my time), but the idea of causing someone else's death is horrific. I can’t imagine doling out that kind of pain to another person, let alone their loved ones.

‘The trailer has to stop. I have to make it stop,’ was the extent of my thought process.

In an absence of logic, I did that thing you’re never supposed to do while towing; I slammed on my brakes. My truck spun. The trailer jackknifed. For a moment after the two locked together, it almost felt like we were being lifted. A warm sense of acceptance flowed through me. I'd done the only thing I could think of. It was out of my hands now.

The entire rig pulled backward, following gravity down the hill. I don't know how long it slid down the freeway, but it couldn’t have been more than 15 seconds based on where it ended up.

I wasn’t expecting to perceive much after that, so I was shocked when we stopped moving. Everything was silent. As far as I could tell, I was alive (yes, this did require actual deduction on my part).

I looked around. My truck had parked itself almost neatly, parallel to the concrete barrier facing up the highway in the wrong direction. My trailer lay nearly on its side, somehow still perched atop the wheels of its right axles, its left axles hovering several feet above the ground. It was still attached to the hitch and lay the width of the highway, thoroughly preventing any through-traffic that might approach.

There were no others cars in sight. No carnage. I was relieved. I was surprisingly uninjured.

Continued in the next post...