Amy Lu's View

I sincerely thought my life was in danger. 

It was June 2011, and Chad and I had just climbed up a mountain in Scotland. It was extremely windy, so windy that I literally had difficulty standing up in the wind. The wind blew me down at least once. It was also extremely foggy, so I couldn’t see that far ahead of me. Chad was holding onto me, but I thought there was a reasonable chance that the wind could literally blow me off the edge of the mountain, or at least knock me down causing me to roll down the mountain and land in a painful heap. And if the wind didn’t get me, I thought I might fall off the mountain because I couldn’t see where the edge was. 

Thanks to a post I made on Facebook, I know the name of the mountain was Ben More, and we climbed 3,169 feet. In my mind, we had made it to the summit of Mount Doom (one of the few Tolkien references I will ever feel brave enough to make). 

Later, once the perceived danger had passed, Chad corrected my interpretation of the experience–I wasn’t really in danger of blowing off the mountain and over the edge, although he did confirm that tripping and falling because of lack of visibility was a legitimate concern. 

I don’t think I voiced my concerns to Chad, or to the two other hikers who were with us (John, our guide, and Kristina, our other tour group member) at the time. Maybe I wasn’t sure we were really in danger, and/or was too embarrassed to say so? Maybe I didn’t think it would do any good?

I am a little chagrined that I don’t remember thinking too much, if at all, about Chad’s safety, or about how John and Kristina were doing. Again, maybe I just assumed they were all more competent than me, and knew how to not blow and/or fall off a mountain. Maybe I thought screaming “We’re all going to die!” wasn’t going to help, and I didn’t have much else to offer in the situation? 

Once we made it down off the top of the mountain, I felt exhilarated and mighty. I felt even better when I was back at the hotel, warm and dry, sipping some whisky and basking in my accomplishment and feeling proud because I was such a badass.  

I’m reminiscing about this now because today our church service was about living on the edge, and we had the opportunity to share some type of reading during the service. Of course I volunteered to participate in the service–I wasn’t going to miss out on the chance to stand in front of a microphone. I thought maybe this experience of being on a literal edge of a mountain would be good material for our service, but eventually opted to repurpose one of my previous blog posts about being on an emotional edge. Not surprisingly, I have more than a couple of those (frequently involving food and Chad). 

But I can’t let any content product go to waste, so now I’m reverse engineering a draft of a piece intended to be read aloud into a blog post (is this meta?)

I didn’t dress properly for a Scottish mountain hiking adventure and I was wet and cold for most of the time, so this experience definitely taught me the value of investing in the proper attire for outdoor activity. I also learned that just because I feel like I’m in a dangerous or risky situation, I may not really be on the edge of something or in harm’s way. It may be hard to stand up in a literal or metaphorical wind, and I may not be able to see or understand my surroundings, but that doesn’t mean I’m really going to be blown off the mountain. 

If I survive my experience of being on the edge–whatever it is–I’m going to feel stronger and braver, which might even lead me to try new things and take a new risk. It’s definitely going to make that after accomplishment drink (real or metaphorical but I hope it’s real) taste even better.