Day 95

Danger is my middle name.

Well, alright, I don't actually have a middle name. And if I did, it would probably be more along the lines of "Blunder", or "Oblivious".

I do not make a habit of intentionally putting myself into dangerous situations. Until fairly recently, I have done everything I could to avoid risky behavior.

Once upon a time as a teen at girl's camp, we went repelling. As the instructor stood with us at the top of the cliff and asked for a first volunteer, I had an identity crisis, and was momentarily convinced that I was a fearless young woman who could show all the of my peers what it meant to be brave as I joyfully frolicked down the side of the cliff. After harnessing up and getting a good look off of the ledge, my self-awareness returned at a breathtaking speed. It must have shown on my face, because the instructor looked at me and asked if I was sure I wanted to do this. Turning my eyes back to the rest of the young women from the stake I had just moved into, I knew that I had no choice. To save face I would have to suck it up and quickly get this over with. So it was that the one woman earthquake made her way over the side of the cliff and gingerly began her decent. Then, about half way down, I put my foot on a rock that gave way underneath me. I was firmly secured by the rope and harness, so I just regained my footing and it was no big deal, but it was enough to crack what fragile remnant of composure I had left. Paralyzed with terror, I pressed myself to the cliff and could not seem to make myself move any further. Cries of encouragement began to ring through the canyon, as the young women all joined in to try and grant me courage enough to find my way to the bottom. However, all that this accomplished was making me aware that I truly had everyone's attention in my moment of personal crisis. So I started crying. Eventually, and ever so slowly, I made my way to the bottom. I grabbed a water and went over to a tree to pull myself back together. I felt a heavy weight of shame as I watched the rest of the girls gracefully bound down the side of the cliff. I was reminded that I should always be the girl to go last with stuff like this. 

In the last few years, I've decided that taking measured risks can be a good thing. I try to partake in activites that give me the illusion of being in peril, while actually being quite safe. Whitewater rafting is one of my favorite things to do.

See, that's the face of courage right th... Oh, wait. Wrong picture.

Here we go! By my third trip, I was handling it like a champ.

I'll jump on any legit roller-coaster you can throw my way. Given the opportunity, I'd love to try repelling again. There are only a few things that I absolutely won't do, cliff diving being one of them, thanks to the opening scene of A Walk to Remember.

My problem is that I usually don't knowingly walk into a dangerous situation. I'm far more likely to suddenly realize I'm already in the middle of one.

A prime example of this happened my first summer up in Jackson Hole.

We didn't get off of work until about ten o'clock most nights, so usually it was too late to really go out and do anything. Then, one night, a group decided to take a midnight hike up in the Tetons. This sounded like fun to me, so I swapped my cowboy boots for hiking boots, and hopped in the car. I thought that there were more people going, but after I was in the car I found out that it was only going to be the five of us.

I'd been on a night hike before, but as we were driving up toward the park, it occurred to me that my previous night hike had been in Logan Canyon, where the mountain lions are usually shy and the most dangerous thing you are likely to encounter is a skunk. The hike I was about to embark on was in the Tetons, where there are a greater abundance of predatory animals who may see humans as just another link in the food chain. However, I re-assured myself that most of the big predators avoided main trails, so we should be fine.

The first thing I noticed as we pulled into the parking lot, were all of the construction crews doing work right around the trail-head. The second thing I noticed was the trail-head itself. My parents had been up the past weekend and had gone hiking. As I read the name of trail, I was struck with the horrific realization that my parents had been on this very hike and seen a grizzly just a few days before we pulled up for our midnight excursion. I had a vision of a scene like unto this:



Only, I would not be mistaken for a bear cub.

Oh, no. I would be mauled and then eaten.

I voiced my concerns, but my co-workers brushed them off and told me that I could wait in the car if I wanted. I sat for a moment to contemplate my options. Staring out at all of the construction workers in the dark, and remembering all of my mom's warnings and stories about things that happen to girls who hang out with creepy men in parking lots, I finally decided that I would take my chances with the bears. However, I was not going to relinquish my flashlight, which was one of two in the group. My friend, Ashlee, was almost as jumpy as me, so she got the other one. The rest said the moon was full enough that they were totally fine without them.

As we started out, I was riffling through the file in my brain marked, "Bear Safety". Having spent a good amount of my childhood hiking up in Yellowstone, this file was actually fairly sizable. I quickly threw out the card about not hiking in the dark through known bear country, and continued on in search of something useful in my current predicament. What I remembered was that bears will usually try to avoid humans if at all possible. They tend to attack when they are surprised and feel threatened. I knew that they sold sleigh bells in the parks that you could tie to yourself while hiking, so the bears could hear you coming. I did not have musical devices on me of any kind. But I did have my voice. I started out just talking as loud as possible. When I ran out of topics to keep the conversation flowing, I switched to singing old girls camp songs at the top of my lungs. When I ran out of those I switched to classic rock. By about halfway through Bohemian Rhapsody, the three without flashlights had sped up to get away from me. I was fine by this, because now they would be the ones to sneak up on a cantankerous grizzly, and hearing their screams ahead, I would know to turn tail and run.

Thanks mostly to my singing, I'm sure, we did not get attacked by a bear on our way to the lake. Or, at least, where they told me a lake was. I could only see black.

There is probably a bear right beyond where the flash reached for this photo op at the "lake".

By this point, Ashlee and I were more than ready to get gone. We tried to talk the others into leaving, but none of them seemed in a hurry, so we told them we'd see them back at the car. They said something along the lines of "Whatever", and Ashlee and I took off at steady jog, screaming a conversation about nothing in particular. It took us awhile to remember that we had both of the flashlights. We stood still for a few minutes, but both of us were feeling extremely uncomfortable, and the others weren't responding to our screams, so we went on, reasoning that they had gone ahead of us and our flashlights on the way there, so they could do without us on the way back. We made it back to the car, where the construction workers ignored us. We were thrilled to be out of the woods, but we didn't have the keys, so we just huddled next to the car.

Exactly 38 minutes later, the others arrived, none too pleased with us leaving them. But, I didn't even care that I had made some enemies. I was getting into a car with all of my limbs intact and going back to my warm bed, that, last time I checked, was free of bears.

And that's the story of the time I went on a hike in the dark and didn't see a single bear.

But I felt dangerous as sin, and that's what really matters.