Climbing your Mountain

I am a tall person. Strange way to start a story but it’s true. Now I may be tall but I do have a fear related to that fact. I am afraid of heights. I have always been my whole life and I’ve accepted that for the most part. It can really be a bother because sometimes you can’t always do some stuff that your friends can do, such as roller coasters and mountain climbing and stuff like that. It’s just something that has really stuck to a huge part of me and I just can’t seem to get rid of it. It makes me who I am, too bad the other half is mostly pride and sometimes forgets I have that fear.

I went to go hangout with my best friends Matt and Jared and we were gonna meet at Matt’s house. I get a call from Matt asking me if I would want to go hiking that day. I said sure and started packing my stuff. I got there and Jared was running late, so I was the first one there. I go in to see Matt and hangout till Jared gets there. Matt and I start talking about where we are headed. Being the type of guy I am, I haven’t been on many hikes in my life, so Matt offers me some equipment, such as long pants, sunglasses and a knife. Jared finally shows up and we’re all ready to head out.

We start walking and talking, just having a great time. They would sprint ahead from time to time and I would keep a nice, steady walk telling them I don’t sprint unless I have a good reason too, like a fire or a lion. Matt takes all around and we start seeing the sights, it was amazing, both the weather and the view. He starts showing us devil’s den. We are up pretty high but I didn’t notice, it was fun. We started heading down, checking out the sides of the hill we’re on and the I get asked a question. “Hey Kyle, you want to take the easy way back or the medium hard way” He tells me the easy way was back the way we came and Jared was up to the challenge so I wasn’t gonna back out in front of them. I say the medium hard way and I walk around the corner to met up with them. Turns out that the medium way was to climb basically straight up with only solid and thin trees to help us up. Naturally, as the large guy of the group, I’m thinking I’m gonna die but I decided not to tell them, just to keep things light and I’m sure they would have found out if I did.

We began the climb back up and at first it wasn’t too bad. The ground supported you and the trees were able to withstand a person leading on it. As we got midway, it started to get harder for me to climb up. The soil became loose and the trees grew thinner. I was trapped at one point, not restrained to anything, but without anywhere to go. I started to panic, thinking about where I was and about the fall down, but I remained calm on the outside. Matt saw me stuck and tied a rope to the tree at the top and climbed back down to help me. He gave me the rope and it helped a lot till we were just almost at the top. I couldn’t make the last big leap to the top and if I messed up, I knew I was going to hit the ground. Matt was right in front of me and he had his hand out stretched. I was standing on the last tree that could support a person and by taking his hand, that would mean losing my ground support. I gave him my complete trust and he helped pulled me to the top.

It was a noble and brace thing for him to do. He helped me climb that mountain and I was very grateful. When we would all hangout or go driving somewhere, if there was someone stuck or in a car crash, he would always pull over and try to help. I remember this when I was driving home from school on an icy day. I saw this car pulled over on Dennis Hill Rd, and I know the area, so I knew they were probably stuck. I remember what Matt work do in this case, so I pulled and asked if they were alright. It turned out to be another friend from school and I offered to help them. I went back to my house and got some sand to put under his car and I pushed it while he drove. We got it unstuck and he thanked me for it. It felt good helping someone climb their own mountain and I was happy that I had climbed mine.

Photo on Foter.com