The day started like any other day, except with a lot of enthusiasm. The excitement in the car kept on building with the recalling of every known dinosaur name and facts. The kids were engaged and adrenaline was rushing with expectations. It was a good family ride.
We made a stop in a small town on the way near noon time. The staring eyes of every resident in that small town betrayed their unfamiliarity with foreigners. We might have been US citizens but our skin color, accent and manners always made us stand out in small towns. We are no strangers to stares but those stares in that small town rattled us somehow and we breathed a sigh of relief on exiting that place.
The sigh of relief was short lived. We had resumed our journey towards the destination but still could not shake off that creepy feeling. In fact, we started feeling uneasy about a lot of other intangible things. Being used to long road travels with small kids, we were accustomed to all sorts of road conditions and weathers. We had travelled jam packed with traffic and also passed areas without company for hours on stretch. Rain, storms and hurricanes...nothing had worried us the way we started feeling on that particular day.
We were going towards a national park but there was no one, and I literally mean no one on the road. We drove hour after hour and not a sign of a single living soul in sight. The vista was extremely wide with green pastures all around and the road was visible in both directions for miles and miles on stretch but no one in either direction. One often experiences such isolated travels on the great planes of America but there was a strange feel to that particular ride. Usually, one starts seeing company near tourist attractions but there was no activity at all on that route.
This phenomena became even more peculiar on entering the park itself. There was no one at the gate, in the parking lot or anywhere else we looked. Our first instinct was to get the heck out of there but then we thought about all the effort and miles traveled and decided to explore the park on our own. There were signs of directions posted everywhere, that we thought, could be easily followed to explore the park.
We left the deserted parking lot and started walking on the pathway that had the signs indicating the direction of the dinosaur footprints. We took several immediate turns following the signs. A few minutes and turns on the path and another strange experience happened. I felt chilling winds on my right side while my left side felt hot humid breeze. The contrast of the temperature gave me goosebumps and I felt a chill run down my spine. Holding my younger child's hand, I tried to catch up with my husband who was leading the way holding our other child's finger. Still trying to catch up with him, I noticed that the path had become so narrow that two people could hardly walk side by side. Not only that, there was a deep ditch on the left side of the path. I don't remember any railing. If there was any, it might have been so low that I did not notice it. There is no other explanation that comes to my mind.
I caught up with my husband but could not walk beside him due to the narrowness of the path. By now, the clashing temperature experience was forgotten since my main concern was to keep safe on the path. My husband and I had barely started the conversation whether we should continue on the path or return when hail started to fall. All of a sudden the sky became so dark that we could barely see a few feet ahead. Meanwhile the intensity of hail increase. I'm not kidding, some of the hail was the size of mini golf balls. We could not even hear each other's voices over the screaming winds and tapping of the hail.
The main problem was how to go back. Low visibility meant that we could miss the signs that we had followed earlier and take wrong turns back. Same thing faced us while going forward. We were rooted to the spot not knowing what to do. Our full focus was trying to save our terrified kids from the hard hitting hail. We had to find a shelter but how and where?
That is when we noticed them! We saw something in that diminished visibility that we had not seen in all clarity a few minutes back. Within an arms length, we saw a family with kids that was moving in a crouched way. Somehow their manner and confidence suggested that they knew exactly what they were doing and were familiar with the area. On impulse we followed pursuit, in manner and in direction. Bending our bodies over our kids and almost doubling over like them, we blindly followed them to a picnic shed. The hail was falling like a firing squad on the roof of that shed and the howling winds were throwing those giant balls of hail inside the shed on us.
Mimicking the other family, clutching one child each in our arms and shielding our crying children with out bend over bodies, we crawled under the benches.
The storm was at its peak. The walls and roof of the shed seemed to give way any moment. The noise was deafening and at that point the chances of survival looked extremely bleak. My life flashed in front of my eyes and I seriously thought about death and the end. No one in the world knew where we were as we had changed our plans and switched routes at the spur of the moment. We had no cell phones and no contact with the rest of the world. The thought occurred of letting the video camera run so that someday, someone might come to know what happened to us. It was a thought that I could not even implement as my hands and energies were engaged in saving my children.
Then, just like it had started, the storm stopped abruptly. Again, we followed the actions of the other family as they crawled out from under the tables. We were too shook up to say a word but noticed the other family. They were an elderly couple with two small children. They appeared more like grandparents in age to those kids. Without uttering a word, the elderly couple started retreating their steps. We followed pursuit with no clue of direction. Don't know if it was out rattled nerves or storm's doing that we could not see any signs around. We just silently followed the elderly couple leading the way in front. We had heard the children with them scream during the storm under the shed but not a single sound had escaped those elderly lips.
Another turn and relief coursed through our veins on finding us in the parking lot.
Strangest of all things happened at this point. My husband and I had looked at each other with relief and joy at finding ourselves in the parking lot. When we looked back, there was no one in front of us anymore. We looked and our eyes wandered in every direction for the other family but there was no sign of them. It was as if they disappeared in thin air. There was no car in that empty parking lot except ours. No sound or trace of any human being around. We looked again and again but no results. There was a dead silence everywhere. In a hurry, with a speed we didn't know we were capable of, we changed our and our children's wet clothes and left the place.
The road was visible in both directions for miles and miles on stretch. The vista was so broad that any vehicle could have been be spotted for a very very long time and from very far distance....but there was nothing, no car or sign of anyone anywhere.
We had traveled many times in the past before that day and several times after that incident on the road, we travelled long distances and short ones too. Over the years we experienced many things and went through a lot but nothing comes closer to that day...the day we faces death in the face!
The mystery still haunts us about that family whose voice we never heard...who appeared out of nowhere in front of us in a storm and disappeared in thin air after the storm. One thing is for sure, whoever they were, they were God sent because they saved us that day. Without them, we were lost that day. Whoever they were, they were our angels that day!
