A Taste of Death
Suddenly I lost my footing, flipped over backwards, and hurtled downwards. As the boulder-strewn ground rushed 'towards me', I really believed that this would be my death. 
My life did not flash past - all the 20 years of my life and its memories did not flash past - my mind was consumed by crushing breathlessness and that this fall would be my end.
I crashed upon rocks and bounced over boulders, and then entered a horrifying roll - tumbling and rolling down the scree slope. At this point I heard a clear voice within my head: "Splay your arms out!" (Generally, there is not time to think in situations such as these, and I cannot accept this voice was my mind.) Somehow I did stretch out my arms, and this action brought my tumultuous roll to an eventual stop.
Dazed, I clambered upright, being surprised at the time that I could even move. My back was bruised. I had lost my woolly hat. I had a minor graze on my scalp. But looking upwards to the place from where I had just fallen, I knew I ought to have been dead. I had fallen 50 feet or more onto large boulders and scree - the very least I could have expected was a broken back or a smashed skull. The scree and rocks continued for another 400 yards down the steep mountainside, and continuing to roll down that slope would have resulted in many more impacts and injuries. To me, it was a miracle.
The day was a bad one for our hiking party. Just minutes earlier on the same scree slope, the party leader had been injured in the arm and head by a rolling boulder. A little while later, descending the mountainside at dusk, an American lady lost her footing and fell into a rock hole, crumpling onto a narrow ledge just inches from a drop into a steep-sided mountain stream. (Her dislocated thumb required 14 relocation attempts in Fort William hospital.)
Just before my plunge, my boots were slipping on the damp cold rocks. I had indeed felt as if I were about to fall and in fear had prayed a quick plea. I believed that God existed, but little else.
Mystery seemed to surround the day. Before my fall, I counted nine people in our hiking group at the top of the mountain ridges, and the ninth person - a tall guy wearing a red chequered 'lumberjack' shirt and a peculiar canvas rucksack - I had never met or spoken to before. That eight people existed in our party was recorded at base camp, and eight people were in the head count after the accidents. No one other than me had seen the 'ninth' person. A few days later in the pub, several of the same hikers joked among themselves of an 'angel of death'; a strange black figure or silhouette; which several of them had seen overlooking my fall on the mountainside.
The events forced me to consider my purpose for existing. My life had been going nowhere and there seemed little point to it. Generally there was no reason to live other than to survive the adversities of life, enjoy myself through 'having a laugh' and socialising, and blot emptiness in my life with drunkenness. The accident, however, rammed home a fresh outlook.
My escape from death or serious injury had been miraculous. The prayer; the clear voice sounding in my head in a wild situation; a mere scratch to my head that so surely should have smashed against rocks; and, the mysterious circumstances of a 'ninth' person and the reported 'black figure'. I could only conclude that an unseen power had saved my life on that bleak Glencoe mountainside, and from the little I knew, that unseen power must be a merciful God.
Suddenly, the 'religious stuff', with which I had occasionally acquainted myself, made more sense. There was meaning in 'religion' after all - this amazing escape from death and injury convinced me that not only did God really exist, but God cared enough about me to intervene. And if this God is the God of The Bible, then Jesus Christ really did live, die, and rise from the grave - and through this there was a personal meaning for me to discover. Through God's amazing grace, I now had both a purpose to my life and a second chance to live.
(The two in-focus photos above were taken shortly before my accident in November 1992.)