John Paul Bramer

Here's some Okie wisdom for you.

Where there's a baby bison, there's a mama bison.

Bro was the last thing I heard before that bison came charging at us through the brush.

And so Corey and I, we throw ourselves off the untamed side of the mountain, rocks and branches scratching and scraping us the whole way down.

And before we know it, we're far from the trail that we were just on.

So we get up, we dust ourselves off, try to laugh at the situation, and then we go looking for the trail.

And we look, and we look, and we look.

The thing about being lost in the woods is that it takes a good long while to accept.

Your brain just kind of gloms on to this delusional belief that life as you know it is a couple steps that way.

And you go a couple steps that way.

It's not.

But as we're carrying on like this and getting progressively more lost, it's dawning on me that people wouldn't even think to look for us until nighttime.

The sky darkens, clouds gather, it starts to rain.

But it isn't until I hear a rattle by my feet that I realize we're in real trouble.

And a lot of things went through my head as I stared down at that rattlesnake.

Some of them made sense, like, I wonder if my mom knows I love her.

Others were kind of silly, like, wow, my sister and I weren't done with burn notice yet.

I back away slowly.

And when I'm certain that I have somehow survived this close encounter with a rattlesnake, I say what I should have said hours ago.

I say, Corey, we need to call the rangers.