• Water was streaming out of my eyes as I fell through the crisp, frigid air. The freezing wind was coming at me too fast to wrap my head around. I was facing down towards the earth. The very quickly approaching earth.

    As I tried to look out of my stinging eyes, I saw the white ground and some green coming from under the snow. The green was the evergreen trees in a forest, directly below me.

    I turned my head an inch to the left, and the wind whipped it the rest of the way. I saw my dad in the air about fifty feet away from me, falling a little faster than I was.

    "PULL YOUR CHUTE, LUCY! HURRY!" he screamed into the icy wind. I had almost forgotten about my parachute! In a sudden panic, I fumbled around for the cord, and then I pulled it. I felt my speed change and I didn't worry anymore. I was falling a lot slower, and everything was going to be fine.

    A second after my chute released, I saw my dad's go up below me, a bright red and orange contrast to the white snow and the trees. "Trees." As I opened my mouth, the wind stole my breath and the word that came with it. This time I yelled, "TREES! DAD!" The forest was right below us now.

    I braced myself for the impact of hitting the snow and branches of the pine trees in the forest. I closed my eyes and felt a giant snowball hit my entire face and upper body. It was freezing, and it stung more than anything I'd ever felt before. Than there was another hit, on the left side of my body. Then the right. Impact after impact, branch after snow-covered branch, I grunted and yelled, as I fell my way through the trees.

    I opened my eyes and I was still falling. There was about 100 feet between the ground and myself. I was past all of the branches of the trees. In the last 50 feet of air, I started falling faster and faster, and I knew this was it. I was going to collide with the snowy, frozen earth. I was going to die.

    My parachute had gotten caught high up in the branches above. I was ten feet from the ground when I closed my eyes again and jerked to a sudden stop. My eyes flew open, and all the breath I ever had was knocked out of me.

    I had finally caught up with the length of my parachute strings. I was held ten feet above the ground, by my harness and my invisible chute (way up yonder) in the giant trees.

    When I could find the air to take a breath again, I called out for my dad.

    "Lucy? Where are you? Did you land okay, sweetheart?" I heard some Walking Noises coming closer to me. "Oh, Lord! Lucy! Are you alright? Don't worry, I'll get you down from there. Can you hear me okay?"

    "Yea. Are you okay? What happened to you?" I asked, worried. My dad was much older than me, and it'd be bad if he got hurt just from landing.

    "I'm fine. I was lucky and my landing worked out just right, between the trees. It's you I'm worried about, honey. Did the harness hurt you?" He started to make a big pile of fallen branches, right under where I was hanging.

    "Well... I couldn't breath when I first stopped because it was so sudden. And now, I'm really sore in all the places my harness hits. What are you doing with those branches? I can't jump onto them, I'd kill myself."

    "No... this is more of a ladder or a pile for me to climb on and reach you." Dad kept adding more and more fallen branches from all around onto the pile. It was already half the distance from the ground to me, which was about 5 feet. Almost as tall as me.

    "But, no! You'll get yourself hurt! I can just jump. All you need to do is add some snow to the top so the landing isn't all scratchy..." I stopped talking because my dad already climbed the whole pile and reached out to me.

    He grabbed my leg to steady himself and then said, "Here, Lucy. Start to undo your harness and then we'll get you down from here."

    I worked at the harness for a few minutes, untying it. Then, with a small, girly scream, I slipped out of the parachute, fell on my dad, and we both slid backwards down the tall pile of tree arms. I jumped up and helped my dad to his feet, and examined our scratches from the twigs and pine needles.

    Rubbing my sore arm, I said, "Wasn't that exciting! Ha. Heh haaa.... Now what?"