Have you ever heard of Russian roulette?  Russian roulette is a wicked game (usually a drinking game) to “test one’s bravery.”  If you’re lucky, nothing will happen and you get to live to see another day. If you aren’t you move immediately to the afterlife. (I’m not sure what happens if you chicken out, but most likely it’s fatal.)

Let me be clear– I’ve never played that game, nor would I ever play it.  But have I taken stupid chances?  Have I played Russian roulette with thoughtless decision-making?  You’d  better believe I have– especially when I was young and “invincible.”  What comes to my mind is a series of events that occurred during a camping trip with four teenaged friends– at a place in the Talladega National Forest we simply called “The Train Tunnel.”

It was absolutely the coolest place to go camping.  Pitching tents on the top of a hill, which also happened to be above a train tunnel running through the mountain, was a first-rate camping experience!  Several times in the middle of the night, the ground beneath the tents shook as Norfolk-Southern locomotives pulled a long line of cars through the gently curving tunnel.  On the eastern end of the tunnel, the train moved directly onto a train trestle that crossed the wide and pristine Talladega Creek.  It was a spectacular sight in the daytime, but under a nighttime canopy of stars, the sights and sounds were nothing short of riveting.

Getting to this brilliant camping location in the National Forest was not easy.  Rugged, muddy logging roads forking off narrow county roads, twisting and turning around the hills and valleys provided the only route.  My friend, Steve, had been there often, and was delighted to share this highly touted “train tunnel camping experience” with Jeff, Warren, Walt and me.

First, gathering small pup tents, sleeping bags, cooking utensils, an ice chest, flashlights, and fire-making tools had to be done.  We loaded everything into the back of Steve’s dad’s big truck and headed out while it was still daylight.  A quick trip to Allen’s Grocery for food was our final task. Together we decided on sandwiches with potato chips for our evening meal, and scrambled eggs with Canadian bacon for a hearty morning breakfast cooked over a campfire.  A couple of gallons of milk were also be required (for five growing boys) as a compliment to the clear, mountain water of Talladega Creek.

It was dusky dark when we finally made it to the logging road.  A couple of miles into the forest our truck slid into a deep rut and slammed into a mud hole. We worked together to push the truck out of the hole and back onto the path– a muddy, messy affair indeed.  Unfortunately, a large rock in the mud hole had cracked the manifold.  The truck was drivable, and we made it to the hilltop campsite, but the sound of the busted manifold echoing through the forest sounded like a helicopter landing on top of the mountain!

The bologna sandwiches were delicious, the campfire was perfect, and the evening was spent laughing, talking, and just being friends.  I remember a contentious debate on whether or not baloney and bologna were actually the same thing.  Only the sound of a train approaching and the sensation of the hill gently rumbling beneath us broke our train of thought.  Even after we bedded down for the night and slept, we anticipated, woke-up, and relished the feel of every train that passed under the mountain.

The next morning we devoured breakfast quickly, put out the fire, and headed down the hill to explore the train tunnel beneath us.  The tunnel was much more narrow that I had imagined– just wide enough for a train!  As we crept into the damp, eerie tunnel, past the “no entry” warning sign, our flashlight beams illuminated lots of bones– bobcat bones– raccoon bones– fox bones.  Obviously the poor creatures hadn’t made it of the tunnel in time.  Still we dared each other to go deeper into the hollow tomb– and we did, moving almost halfway through the tunnel.

Suddenly, we heard a train coming! Having no idea how close the train was, or even from which direction it was coming, we dashed back toward daylight. Problem!  The train track led directly out of the tunnel and onto a long trestle across Talladega Creek. We had to jump from the tunnel entrance, off of the trestle and slide down a sleep embankment– about twenty yards down to the creek at the bottom.  The speeding train was already in the tunnel before we ever got out of it!  Fortunately we had run in the right direction.

Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, it was an adrenaline rush stoked by fear, but resulting in a daring escape.  Exhilarating– albeit extremely stupid.

The long slide down the hill ended at water’s edge. Celebrating our great escape, we began horsing around, hopping from rock to rock as the train above us rattled across the trestle.  Jeff and Steve soon caught a glimpse of a huge water moccasin sliding off a rock and into the water– quickly disappearing.  We halted our play briefly, but couldn’t locate the big snake in the water.  We assumed our loud chatter had chased it away– that is, until it abruptly lifted its huge head out the water– right between Warren’s feet as he perched on a flat rock!  Warren’s spirited riverdance was superb.  We all saw it.  Steve was convinced that Warren had actually walked on water!

The moccasin must have been an angry momma snake, because she came toward us several times.  We were terrified, running into each other, sliding into the creek, balancing from rock to rock, trying to get away from the moccasin’s angry advances.  Walt slipped on an algae covered rock and broke his bird finger– which remains crooked to this day!  The only thing that prevented someone from getting a nasty snakebite was the constant barrage of rocks we threw at her each time she lunged forward.  Finally we were able to slow her down enough to bludgeon her to death with stick.  It was the largest, angriest moccasin I had ever seen– and is still to this day.  Her head was almost the size of my hand.

Later in the morning we packed up our belongings and headed back to civilization.  We had survived our wilderness adventure with quite a story to tell  (and took the water moccasin’s remains home with us as proof.)  Still, I never told my parents the whole story.  I knew better.  We had played train tunnel roulette and won…..this time.

At the end of the day, we found ourselves alive and grateful– for our shared friendship; for God’s protection; and for a newfound, sobering realization–  that in spite of the day’s repeated success in dodging disaster–  We are not invincible.

“The wise see danger and take refuge, but fools keep going and pay the penalty.”    Proverbs 22:3