Post # 8

Our principle was Mrs Bell. She might as well have been the Dragon Lady of Terry and the Pirates. Mrs Bell booked no nonsense from us kids. She had small eyes and a tight mouth with narrow lips and a large body. She loomed like a fire-breathing Godzilla over us first graders but by the sixth grade some had lost their fear enough to cut up in her class but only a few.

It was at Jonas Perkins Elementary School that I first learned real fear.
I was afraid of heights. The three story wood building had its auditorium stretched across the entire third floor. We’d have fire drills and I dreaded them if we were in the auditorium. As the alarm went off we ‘d line up and file down the grated iron fire escape. If I looked down I saw three floors straight down and my knees would buckle. I was always the last down the fire escape clinging to the railing feeling step by step with my eyes closed.

I finally over came my fear of heights in 1976 on top of the eighteen thousand foot Rita Cumba Blanca mountain in Colombia, standing on the edge of an ice lip on the narrow peak staring down the shear seven thousand foot cliff to the Ratoncito Valley. I looked straight down the face then to the valley floor and off to the glaciers on the other side of the valley. It was as if I was staring out of a jet plane window. Depth perception and its fear had melted away leaving awe. I could feel myself floating along like one of the clouds bunching up below us. My concentration was abruptly interrupted by my two companions yelling, “Watch out. You’re too close to the edge.” I was amused, not alarmed. They were experienced climbers and were visibly afraid as we huddled on the narrow peak. I felt not fear. On the contrary, I was exhilarated staring straight down the cliff. It was another world, a realized fantasy. I was in a dream. We were above the clouds, like in an airliner. I wanted to say a prayer and thank God for the experience but was over ruled. We began our descent immediately.