A Kuna man is lucky to be alive after being crushed under a massive tree while snowmobiling near Cascade.I thought, this is not good. I'm probably not coming off this mountain... to be honest," said Shawn Taylor.RELATED: Highway 21 closed due to rising avalanche dangerTaylor's group was riding to a warming hut when he was thrown off his snowmobile and pinned under a large section of the tree. At first I thought, well maybe that was a big thing of snow that fell off the tree. I was trying to talk myself out of what really happened, I think. And then I realize, no there's branches and stuff. I'm like, oh, a branch broke off and then I don't remember much after that, he explained.Taylor says the group he was riding with and those in the warming hut jumped into action to help him. They all rushed over. It took seven guys and a saw to get the tree off of me," said Mr. Taylor.His next ride was down the mountain in a snowcat headed for a clinic in Cascade, where he says X-rays showed his T12 vertebra was burst fractured. They said I'm lucky to be alive and I'm definitely lucky not to be paralyzed, he added.Paramedics rushed Shawn to Saint Alphonsus in Boise, but on the trip, he came bumper to bumper with his mom also on the way to the hospital to meet him.So when I pulled out, all of a sudden a vehicle was passing me, and it was Shawn in the ambulance. I could see him in the back, which made me really cry, Deborah Taylor said. I just thought I have to buck up and drive and get to the hospital. Deborah says she prayed for her son for that entire drive.The prayers were really answered because it is a miracle that he's here, she said. It could be so much worse, we could be planning a funeral.The surgery to fix his shattered vertebra went smoothly, but the recovery will be a long process.The snowmobile community, they saved my life that day... they really did. It never even crossed my mind to watch out for trees. You watch out for millions of other things dangerous up there, and so this was a big wake-up call. Its gonna be hard for me to recover from this one mentally as far as snowmobiling.You can find a link to a GoFundMe to support Shawn and his family here.