It happened so quickly, Mark Marrott had time for only one thought: "This is going to be really bad."

One second, he was 40 feet up in a spruce tree with a chainsaw — just another day doing chores in his Pleasant Grove backyard. Then, an instant later, he was screaming in agony as his feet hit the ground with a gruesome thud, pulverizing his heel pads and turning part of his shin bones to dust.

Later, Marrott would learn that if he'd landed any other way, he wouldn't have made it that April morning in 2008. His brother checked the medical odds on surviving such a terrible fall: a grim 3 percent.

"Those 3 percent are mostly paraplegics or quadriplegics now," says Marrott, "so I know that somebody was definitely looking out for me that day. … When you look at the alternative, life in a wheelchair really isn't that bad."

Since the accident that left him unable to stand on his own for more than a minute or two, Marrott has found new passion and meaning in his life. He's now a wheelchair athlete who trains on a hand cycle, 36 miles every other day — further than he ever dreamed of going when he was able-bodied.

Before the fall, he suffered from hip pain as a result of a childhood disease that kept him in an Iowa hospital for months at a time, growing up. "I couldn't run 100 yards," he recalls, "and now, here I am doing marathons. It's been a huge eye-opener."

Hoping to share his message with people who could use a touch of inspiration in their lives, Marrott recently met me for a Free Lunch of chicken salad and gargantuan muffins at Mimi's Cafe in Sandy, a few days before competing in the St. George Marathon.

After holding the front door open for other customers during the lunch rush, Marrott wheels up to the table and grins.

"A lot of people aren't sure how to deal with a person in a wheelchair," he says. "In fact, if my wife is with me, people will talk to her like I'm not there. But instead of being bothered by it, I try to joke with them, have a little fun with it."

"Like the other day," he says, "I was at a job interview (Marrott was laid off from his office manager job in May) and the receptionist asked me to take a seat. I told her, 'I brought mine, thanks.' I want to help people to laugh, not to feel bad for me. Because there are so many more people out there with worse things to bear."

Once a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, Marrott spent almost 10 years digging trenches and cutting down trees on remote fire lines. So when two tall pines needed to be taken down last year in his own backyard, he hooked himself to a harness and climbed up to do it.