How Dallas’ nature trails healed my broken spine

A brilliant spring day begins with a guided tour of flowering dogwoods at the Dogwood Canyon Audubon Center. Even in the dull, cloudy light, the white bracts of the flowers pop. Lightning cracks, the sky is raining and our hiking group is sliding down the path again.

After the rain is over, I jump into my Subaru Outback for an afternoon tour of Ellis County Bluebonnets. As I drive onto an interstate ramp, I realize it’s the wrong one and flinch. The slight pull on the steering wheel makes me spin on smooth asphalt.

Strike! The car peeled back the guardrail and stopped the vehicle with a rear wheel hanging over the edge. The impact hits my head against the side window and it spins like a bobble doll. Excruciating pain burns down my back and darkens my consciousness.

X-rays show the verdict: My second vertebra is in pieces. Only 2% who suffer this injury survive unharmed. Half die instantly; the rest are paralyzed. Its designation: executioner’s break. I am a walking act of grace.

A brilliant Baylor surgeon has a solution. Place the remains of my C2 between the first and third vertebrae and screw them together. Take a hefty sliver of my pelvis and transplant them all into one permanent piece.

For months I lean back in a deck chair, my head wrapped in a ruff, and look through my living room window into a densely wooded back yard. Jungle is perhaps a better word. The flowers of spring change color to the dense green of summer. I start walking again.

The C2 vertebra is smooth with flared edges and gaps for the spinal cord to enter your brain. The exquisite pivot point of the C1 atlas vertebra on the C2 axis vertebra allows you to look back over your shoulder.

The vortices of the atlas axis act as a gyroscope and are constantly adjusting to maintain balance. This pivot results in 20 to 30% of our credit. But after the merger, I have a firm perspective on the future. I can’t turn my head up, down, or to the side.

The vestibular system of the inner ear needs to balance the equilibrium sleep. That requires training, patiently challenging with movement. First shuffle through the house with a rollator, then shuffle up and down the driveway, all in fear of falling.

Friends and neighbors carry me on and give my caretaker husband Scooter a break. Michael goes for a walk with our dog Sally. After I get to a stick, others help me stroll around the block. They kick stones and sticks away so that I don’t stumble and walk more or less in a straight line.

We get to another block and another until we reach my neighborhood park – half a mile! Panting, I sit on a bench with my walking partner. Giant pecans envelop us in shadow. The creek is tempting but rough, 30 yards away. The way home makes it a mile.

Author Amy Martin hikes with a friend after breaking a vertebra. (D KOGLIN)

My friend Mark is taking me to the next level in naturopathy. We carefully leave sidewalks for the smooth, narrow path of the green belt, on which he leads an excited Sally on a leash. When he hears me shuffling, he warns, “Pick up your feet,” which helps me trust that I’m losing contact with the ground. My legs, weak from months of inactivity, are growing strong.

As we walk up the green belt the paths dissolve and we walk on mown grass to make sure I lift my feet. A mile, two, then three and four along the creek I love. More birds, more mammals, even a reptile or two. It nourishes me deeply, pervades me with energy, immerses me in life. I am fully connected to the earth again.

My surgeon is shocked at how quickly the bones of a woman in her 60s with osteoporosis heal. The reason is certainly the quick access to nature and the challenge of leaving the sidewalk. I’m learning to drive again, navigation aids and cameras compensate for my restricted vision and return to work.

Six months after the broken neck, I stop at the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Area after speaking in Denton about my book on poison ivy, The Itchy Business. Spontaneously I drive down the main path. About 15 meters further on, I realize that I have left my ruff and stick, but I keep going.

The spinning begins. The floor is uneven, sloping, somewhat smooth. I can’t look down and see my feet. I stumble, stumble and fall forward on my hands and knees. The inner ear cannot respond quickly enough. But the C1-2 gyroscope would have done it.

I knock on the ground and moan: “You can’t take that away from me, God!” I am grateful to be alive, but I need the closeness to nature that hiking offers. I get to my feet and plow down the paths, footprints in the mud behind me like a dancing drunk.

For the next hour, without the ruff, I become aware of my whole neck moving from side to side as I walk like a hypnotized cobra. My lower cervical vertebra slipped into the top roller and did something that C 1-2 could no longer do. Walking on unpaved paths frees my neck. I put the stick and clip away.

Encouraged, I continue to strike – in the truest sense of the word. I get a book deal from Timber Press to write Wild Dallas-Fort Worth about the nature of North Texas. My naturalist buddy Scott and I are exploring the Piedmont Ridge of East Dallas, the Lewisville Lake Environmental Learning Area, and the Great Trinity Forest.

The song of birds dances in our ears: the slow trilling of a northern cardinal, the lively melody of a painted bunting, the piercing call of a comb woodpecker. Dragonflies collect mosquitoes in a swamp where raccoons track lobsters. A white-tailed deer peeks out of the tall grass. Every sense, every cell in my body feels alive.

In search of a trail that we will never find, we wander through overgrown lowlands. Climb a sloping bank for the perfect view of the river. Jump from one rock to another to cross a narrow stream. Our wild hikes in challenging terrain restore my full balance and strengthen me more than before. Freedom is like flying.

Sometimes gratitude is a number, in my case number two. This Thanksgiving weekend let me ponder the miracles and graces that have earned me a spot among the 2% surviving. I will kneel on the floor in gratitude for the nature of Robert, who healed me, humble and grateful for what the heart cannot endure.

Amy Martin is a Dallas-based writer. She wrote this column for the Dallas Morning News.

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