It was an ordinary trip, a quick jaunt up into the mountains the day after Thanksgiving to get a Christmas tree for his cousin. Just like Mount Baker algebra teacher Jeremiah Carter, 36, had been doing for years.

“We just go out and find a tree every year and cut it down,” Carter said. “That’s just the way it goes.”

An avid outdoorsman, skier, snowboarder and hiker with hours of experience outdoors, Carter – who hiked Mount Rainier’s 94-mile long Wonderland Trail as a teen – is no stranger to potential danger when climbing.

After finding the perfect tree, on a 40-foot ridge by Buck Creek Campground off state Route 410 near Crystal Mountain, Carter volunteered to climb up and cut the tree down.

“It didn’t really seem dangerous, the way the hillside was,” Carter said.

He recalls cutting the tree and watching it tumble down the hillside to where the cars were parked.

He doesn’t remember falling.

“The next thing I remember, really, is lying on the ground with my hands crossed on my chest,” he said. “And my uncle and my cousin talking to me. There was a lot of pain.”

After the tree fell, Carter slipped and followed it down the rocky hillside, sustaining four broken ribs and shattering vertebrae around his spinal cord.

Although he was in searing pain, Carter said he realized one thing instantly: he couldn’t feel his legs.

“I knew right away when I was laying there on the hillside, I knew I couldn’t feel or move my legs,” he said. “They just kept telling me not to move, don’t do anything. I was in so much pain that was pretty easy advice to take.”

After medics stabilized him, Carter was airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

He doesn’t remember the trip.

“The next thing I do remember was being in the hospital in a hospital bed,” he said. “I felt like a rag doll. I was in a hospital bed and then whisked away to some other place. It was just faded memories, in and out. Just trying to stay relaxed through the whole process and not panic was kind of tough.”

With one of his vertebrae shattered, doctors at Harborview Medical Center had no choice but to fuse together the T10 to L2 vertebrae in his lower spine to protect his spinal cord, which was not severed.

“To be able to fix that one, they had to fuse five vertebrae together,” he said.

After surgery, Carter called Harborview his home for more than a month, celebrating Christmas with his wife of 10 years, Amy, and his 4-year-old daughter, Brooklin, in the hospital.

“I don’t feel like it was Christmas, but at the same time we made it special for my daughter,” he said. “I was really looking forward to this Christmas with my daughter. At age four-and-half, it’s magic. But we worked at making it special up at the hospital. We told her Santa was going to visit the hospital.”

Help from friends

While Carter was busy recovering from his surgery and healing his battered body at Harborview, his friends, family, students and coworkers were busy, too.

The Mount Baker Middle School community responded with fundraisers, including “Caps for Carter” and “Jammies for Jeremiah.”

“As soon as the accident happened and we got back to school that Monday, I talked to staff and we decided as a staff that the family was going to need financial support,” said Mount Baker Principal Greg Brown. “We started ‘Caps for Carter’ day, where kids pay a dollar to forego our no-hat rule. Kids were walking up and putting $20s in the box and saying they didn’t even want to wear a hat, they just wanted to help. It was just an outpouring of support.”

Soon Auburn’s Cascade Middle School and Holy Family School got into the action, too, all three raising $7,325 for the Carter family.

“They just had so much fun with it, and their intentions were right there,” Carter said of the fundraising activities. “The support from Mount Baker has been unbelievable.”

The good will towards the Carter family, however, didn’t stop with his students and coworkers.

When Carter returned home on Dec. 30, he was surprised to find friends and family had chipped in to remodel his house, stripping out carpets and installing hardwood floors to make it easier for him to get around in his wheelchair. They had also built a ramp to his front door.

His brothers, Enoch and Jake, got to work widening doorways and rebuilding the master bath to make it ADA accessible. Add in his mother Linda’s contributions helping out, and Carter was “overwhelmed” by the support.

“The support of my family has been incredible,” he said. “I can’t thank them enough.”

Now, Carter is focused on recovery. Although he is prepared to spend the rest of his life in the chair, there is still an outside chance that he’ll regain enough feeling to walk some day. A sliver of hope wide enough for him to grasp.

“With my legs not working, I guess I haven’t come to a point of acceptance,” he said. “We’re hoping that the pressure from the column and the spinal fluid will press that piece of bone, which is just floating in there, and float it back over to the vertebrae. That’s what the surgeon believes is going to happen.”

Already, he says, he’s getting a bit of feeling back in his legs. He describes it as “pressure” rather than an internal sense of feeling.

Future tests

He’ll find out more on Feb. 27 when he goes in to get his back brace off and to forego more testing.

“We’re going to take the X-rays,” he said. “I also have an MRI scheduled because I want to know what the status of my spinal column is. If that bone hasn’t floated back to where it’s supposed to be, then we’re going to talk about surgical options to take it out. I think that by the way he (his surgeon) said it, it means there is going to be a lot of danger to going in there and messing around with the spinal column. The feeling and movement that I have right now could go away. So we’re hoping and praying for the best.”

Carter continued:

“If everything is good from the surgeon’s perspective, I’ll go back into Harborview as a live-in, using the rehabilitation facilities for two-to-four weeks,” he said. “Basically, they’ll be teaching me what I’m supposed to be doing and how I’m going to live.”

Whatever the tests show, Carter is determined to return to teaching, hopefully next year.

“I’d love to be back in the classroom,” he said.

Brown added he hoped to see Carter return to his school.

“I could tell right away just by being in his classroom and observing how much he cares for every kid and the advocacy he had for every student,” Brown said. “He cares about every one of them, and they knew it.”

Most important, however, Carter said he was determined to stay upbeat, positive and focused on recovery for Brooklin.

“She likes to help out,” he said. “She’s very much a part of the recovery. She wants to pray every night that daddy’s back gets better and he can stand up and work his legs. It’s very motivational for my attitude towards rehab, having her around.”