Jul
03
There are times in our lives when we have experiences that change us, and we have to share them. They're filled with heart, soul, and character-building pain that shapes us into the people we are and who we will someday become.I don't have a lot of these experiences, so I'll make due with this.
Last weekend, in the course of our family reunion, a troupe of aunts and uncles and grandchildren went to revisit an area that my mom's family had hiked every year. My life-changing incident involves how I hiked to the top of a mountain. And didn't die.
It wasn't even a mountain, really. It was steep, intimidating, and included a cave and a very important-looking series of power wires on the top. My perception on what should be considered a mountain is likely warped. Living in the Rockies, we usually throw our heads back and laugh at what people from other places consider "mountains." This hill-mountain cyborg is nothing compared to the mountains that constantly surround me.
To clear up any confusion amongst readers, for we all have different opinions of what constitutes as a mountain or not, let's just all assume whatever I climbed looked like this:
Even though it didn't.
A recurring theme in this coming-of-age tale, the point that made this "mountain" trek such a struggle for me, was not my inability to walk far. I'm awesome at walking. It's one of my many talents. Heights also don't intimidate me much. I'm not stellar with being in high places, but they're manageable.
My thing is this: I'm bathmophobic. That is not a fear of baths, although that would be very inconvenient. I'm scared of steepness. I'm not sure how to describe this, other than the fact that I'm the least sure-footed person on planet Earth. Whenever I walk down a steep slope, I subconsciously expect this to happen to me.
The caves were fairly easy to get to, by normal people standards. A trail conveniently paved the way to them. However, part of this path was too steep for my standards. I walked up with no problems, but I crab walked on the way back down. I have no shame in admitting that. (Well, maybe a little bit of shame.)
I can be an overly ambitious person. You know, when I feel like it. Regardless of that moment in the Whitney Hall of Shame,I felt like I could still make the hike to the very top of the hill-mountain lovechild. This involved a fairly extensive trail including many, many steep slopes.
I'm an idiot.
With a handful of family members, we set forth. The trail we hiked was a bit of a challenge, with inclines that hours of walking on the treadmill hadn't quite prepared me for. Do you remember the old nursery rhyme, the Bear Went Over the Mountain, where a bear had climbed up and over a mountain only to find another mountain he had to climb? I sympathized with that bear. Whenever we turned a corner, believing we were finally almost there, we found another obnoxious series of twisting and turning trails.
Then we saw it, the Grand Poobah of hills. The path leading to our very destination, the very top of the not mountain, was hardly a path at all. It was a series of rocks, hundreds of them that could break off the side and cause you to topple to your doom. It's also important for me to mention that this path was very steep. Remember, I don't like steep. Steep is bad. Very bad. The sight of it alone was enough for us to give up right then and there.
All of us except for my great Aunt Margaret. My great Aunt Margaret is in her 70's and very, very miniature. Just to give you an idea, here is an actual-size drawing.
Point being, she's elderly and frail and adorable and the last person there that would be expected to try tackling the Grand Poobah of hills. Yet she did. She stared it determinately in the face. Umbrella in hand, clad in a brightly colored floral jumpsuit, she began to climb.
My uncle Darren turned to me and said, "Look at Aunt Margaret! She's doing it! If she can do it, we can!" He began to follow her. Thinking bitter thoughts about peer pressure, I followed him.
I ended up crawling up on my hands and knees. Humans have the disadvantage of only being able to use two limbs for walking. You don't see a lot of bathmophobic mountain goats, so maybe they're onto something. It was then when I felt like I was in the climax of a movie. A movie about a girl on a family hike with a fear of slopes that she needs to conquer. (I have a feeling there isn't much of an audience for that movie.)
My hands were scratched up from climbing. I started sweating and panting, which I'm sure was ridiculously attractive. About a fourth of the way up, I sat on a rock to rest. My aunt, bringing up the rear, talks about how wonderful I was to "stop and wait" for her. I'll let her believe that. When my aunt caught up with me we walked, hand in hand (because having something sturdy to grab onto helps with my fear of slopes) the rest of the way.
The view was gorgeous, probably all the more so because I was thankful I didn't fall to my rocky doom. There was also a deer about ten yards away, who had four limbs to climb with and obviously did not share a fear of steep hills. The trail back down was easy, gorgeous, and rewarding.
And there were only a few steep areas where I had to cling onto my aunt for dear life.
Congrats on surviving the climb!
And I so thought of this passage from The Golden Mean when reading this -
"How are you unwell?"
I tell him I cry easily, laugh easily, get angry easily, I get overwhelmed.
"That's a sickness?"
I ask him what he would call it.
"Histrionics," he says. "What do you do for it?"
"I write books."
:D
This is amazing!! I had to giggle at your hilarious writing, though I am VERY proud of you for climbing that awesome mountain and especially not falling down!