Wednesday, December 10, 2008

A short story of courage and climbing
We ascended the mountain slowly due to the sand trails that some profoundly stupid man had put there. Soon I was not in even a remotely good mood and the weeds as thick as cold butter looked easier to traverse than this idiotic path. I forged my way through the tumble weed and pathetic little trees and stopped, looked up, and assessed how I would even begin to climb the huge rock formations before me. So as I could think of nothing else I just placed my hands on some crevices I could reach, and launched my legs up, “crap, I missed and only managed to whack my knee on what i am sure was the hardest rock ever!" “Second time, ok here we go. YES!” this time I was able to get to the platform like place farther up on the rock. This process was not easy every, but I got more and more accustomed to it and getting up and over those gigantic boulders and cliffs.
The top, the end, the last stop, looking down I knew why I had agreed to take on this mountain in the first place, it was beyond beautiful, sad excuses for words created by us humans could never hope to put letters and phonetics to the feelings felt when such beauty is found in nature. From this top point we trekked horizontally around the edges to the other cliff points. Way before I was ready to, my roommate was complaining and wanted to return to the modern comfort of a car and heated rooms with a nice cup of hot chocolate. I quickly turned to my more adventurous friend and proposed the awesome idea of going straight down, and I mean down. She of course concurred that it was the coolest idea since five dollar pizza and we looked, thought, ok so we didn’t think that much, and went down. In the beginning they say god created the heaven and the earth but as far as I was concerned he had only created these dumb rocks that kept crumbling every time I even looked at them. Then without any warning at all the rocky terrain morphed into sandy hills we had no choice but to slide down at a rapid pace. Run, slide, run, slide, fall, ugh this part as I recall was not anywhere close to the outer boundary of fun. Just as I was growing accustomed to scraping off layers of skin with every fall the devil sand was gone and we were staring down into the abyss that filled the large crevice below us. By this time I was in the rustic take on anything mood and was thrilled at the opportunity to leap down and navigate our way through this dead river bed. So after one anything but graceful jump down we were working our way through rooms and halls of rock. “snort.” I turn, what could have possessed my friend, Alayna, to exhaust such a hoggish sound? I was … oh quite frankly no words but the forward truth could possibly tell you what I was, it was a pig, well a wild boar of sorts actually. It had back poor Alayna into a rocky corner and she was displaying a face of mixed anger, for me walking ahead, fear, of dying of course, and wonder at the sight of such an animal on this supposedly serene day hike. I hugged the pig!! “wait what oh man what was I thinking, that’s right I wasn’t, without using my brain at all I launched myself onto the back of the hog and threw it backwards causing us both to fall, me and the pig, then before the ugly thing could regain its position and attack again I Chuck Norrised its nose and pushed the nasty snout into its wimpy brain. Death took over the boar’s body and the scent of rank rancid flesh soon followed. We naturally carried the carcass down with us for supper and proof of our heroic feat. While walking we talked about the awesome events past and how thoroughly excited we were to show off the prize we had won. Whoosh out of nowhere bounded what I can only assume was the king of the surrounding jungle. (A lion for you phrase knowing challenged) far before any action could be taken on my part I was knocked unconscious. The following events are courtesy of Alayna. The lion flung itself toward her but was hauled suddenly paralyzed by fear of the approaching giant ants. There surely measures two feet long by one foot tall. That’s right, believe it folks! The ants lifted us up and carried both into their crawling home. I just laid there in the creepy city of bugs and dreamed of everything but ants. At this moment Alayna was filled with a burst of courage and she hoisted up my almost lifeless body ran frantically out of the ant mound. She ran as fast as she could with my body weighing her down and just as the fate of us both was to be sealed by the again approaching lion I raised my head that fell on her back, leaped our of her arms and wrestled with the monstrous cat. The fight was not fair; it resembled Muhammad Ali vs. Steve Earkel. I had my left arm torn off in one shark swing of the claw, and then Alayna barged into the tussle with a sharpened stick and plunged it into the beating heart of my opponent. The lion was done, its life faded fast before our eyes. Then with its last pathetic burst of energy it swung and took out the eye of Alayna. So now blinded and one limb short of a set we looked at each other and knew between us both with no words that all we could do was pray to the almighty Lord for healing of our broken bodies. I don’t know why or how but we opened our eyes after the process and found ourselves to be whole as we were when the mountain adventure had first begun. With newly gained strength and gusto we ran to the road where the car had idly sat for 3 hours. Along the road however we were met with three solid feet of piercing tumble weed. We kept trekking, worked our way through and kicked aside the snakes we met along the way, they were nothing compared to the lion and boar. “ROAD, SWEET ROAD, IVE NEVER BEEN SO PROFOUNDLY HAPPY TO SEE PAVEMENT!” The ride home was filled with questions and explanations. Although only few believe our tale Alayna and I both know the mountain story and will never deny our miraculous adventure.

1 comment:

  1. So, social work you say....how about writing? You know fantasy literature....I think you have real talent my dear!
    Love,
    JoAnn

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