I remember a company retreat once at Petit Jean State Park where some of the ladies from our office walked to the edge of one of those cliffs where a rock hung out hundreds – I argued that it was millions – of feet above the tree line below. I never got that great of a look as I stood well back on flat ground, telling them how dangerous it was, begging them not to get so close. They ignored me as they took turns posing for pictures on the scenic edge.
I’ve flown back and forth across the country covering college athletics in the past, and flying has never bothered me. But put me on five-foot high perch with nothing between me and the ground and you’ll see a man “crawfishing” backwards. With my knees – perhaps better stated, my lack of quality knees – I am always assuming that one will buckle and I’ll stumble forward a few feet before catching my balance. A few feet could mean the difference between safety and face-planting.
Looking out a 50th-story window is neat. Standing next to the low waist-high railing at a football stadium’s upper deck makes me a little queasy. Flying over the Rockies is beautiful. Cleaning out gutters on the fifth step of a ladder can be unsettling.
I really can’t blame the knees for my fear of heights. I like to refer it as more of a “situational” fear.
As a pre-teen, I remember a man taking me and an older boy fishing in creeks way out on the middle of nowhere Alabama by some railroad tracks. We would walk down the tracks until we came to a creek, and we’d fish that one until the man felt it was time to move on. When we came to a bridge on the tracks where you could see between the ties down below to the creek bed, I would get on my hands and knees and crawl. For someone who, at that age, didn’t weigh much more than a sack of range cubes, my biggest fear was falling between the ties and my body not being found before it reached the Atlantic Ocean. And you know what I feared more than heights? Sharks.
Gosh, I hated railroad bridges.
My mother boarded an Amtrak recently at Little Rock’s Union Station, embarking on a 17-day journey that will take her and a friend to Chicago, Buffalo, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle and eventually back to Arkansas. I plan on taking Amtrak one day to no particular destination. I just hope the cars are far more advanced than those I once loaded and unloaded as a teenager earning minimum wage in my hometown. It was a feed store, and the freight train tracks ran right up next to the back door of the building. With almost every car came more mice, freeloading mice from towns far away that not only got free rides but also ate the best grains Purina could package.
When the day comes that I do hop aboard an Amtrak, I might just plan out a trip far away from my early stomping grounds. Alabama was the scene of the worst Amtrak accident in U.S. history in 1993 when one derailed into an alligator and snake-infested bayou outside of Mobile, killing more than 40 people.
A barge had earlier damaged the bridge. Nevertheless, if there is one thing I’d hate doing more than stepping out on a ledge at Petit Jean it would be taking a plunge into a snake and alligator-infested bayou.
I knew I hated railroad bridges for a reason.