On Friday on the first of March a bunch of us guys thought that it would be fun if we crossed some creeks with our snow machines alongside the Wilson Creek Slough since there was some fast deep running water, and it was sunny and super warm for a day in March. The guys who were there were Garrett, Jack, Jo-Jo, Jonathan, Richard, Matt and I. We worked our way up the slough by crossing the creeks both ways but mostly by keeping our attention on Garrett because he and his snow machine made crossing creeks look easy as a boat on water. Garrett was crossing large bodies of water and sometimes bounced very hard and it looked like fun. The rest of us were too scared to cross some of the parts because our machines were unable to do such things.

Later we all decided to move up to the mouth of Wilson Creek because we all could have more fun crossing the narrower parts, even though they were deeper and swifter than the creeks closer to Marshall which also made them more dangerous. Since we were kids and thought nothing bad could happen to us, we continued being daredevils in the swift parts of Wilson Creek. During our grand old time Jo-Jo all of a sudden tipped over in the middle of one of the creeks and he had to swim back to shore because it was too deep to wade. He also bent his front suspension bar when he crashed. I giggled a bit as everyone else panicked and tried to stop Jo-Jo's snow machine from drifting further down the stream. Later Matt made a fire on the bank and Jack roped the floating snow machine and pulled it halfway out of the water with the brave help of Garrett who got himself wet while helping to pull it out.

Later all of us went back to Marshall except Garrett and Jo-Jo because they were drying out by the fire. On our way down Jonathan got bawled out by his dad for fooling around in water and he had to bring his snow machine home. I went home to change my wet clothes and grabbed a bite to eat and then decided to go back up to Wilson and help Garrett and Jo-Jo with his snow machine. Greg and Jonathan trailed me up and helped Jo-Jo and Garrett drain his water-filled snow machine and bend his front suspension bar back to normal. After we were done we doused the fire and made it home just before it got dark.

by Chris Fitka