Excerpt

Having finished their dinner, retired Shasta County fire chief Scott Williamson and his wife Joan were sitting on their porch watching the brilliant display of stars, enjoying their glasses of wine and passing a joint between each other when they heard the motorcycle approaching the winding narrow highway a few hundred feet below. Scott recognized the engine sounding unusual, probably an older British bike, which was rare to hear. From the vantage of their secluded home unnoticed from the road below, he looked over the patio railing and watched as the bike appeared around a curve, noticeably being very unsafely followed by a large pickup truck. Joan saw her husband’s face tense and looked just in time for them both to observe the truck passing the motorcycle, then the sounds of collision as the motorcycle suddenly careened off the highway and down into the darkness of a deep gulch amidst spires of treetops. The Williamsons instantly recognized a critical emergency, and both bounced from the comfort of moments before. Grabbing shoes, keys, flashlights and phones, Joan grabbed a bottle of water as they raced from their large, comfortable home and jumped into Scott’s truck. She quickly dialed police emergency as her husband drove the short distance to a logging road beneath where they saw the motorcycle disappear.

Scott Williamson turned onto the remote logging road, followed it several hundred yards then parked where he anticipated he’d seen the bike fall. Using their high-powered flashlights they scoured the vicinity for nearly 20 minutes, then saw a metallic reflection and climbed through trees, fallen limbs and boulders as they approached the mangled motorcycle. Searching wide across the surroundings their beams cut through the pitch darkness and finally saw a white helmet, almost concurrently as they heard the distinct sound of an approaching helicopter. Joan redialed the emergency number to provide coordinates and assisted the hovering police team med-evac the badly injured but still breathing person they’d located.