YA Highwayer Kirsten Hubbard's debut novel, LIKE MANDARIN, opens with, "The winds in Washokey make people go crazy."
Name a time you did something completely crazy.
I'm a really goofy person, but also very serious about life. I'm adventurous but not even remotely wild. So I don't have a whole lot of "crazy" stories.
The one thing that comes to mind, however, is a 2-week extreme sports trip I took with my college classmates a few weeks before freshman year. It was supposed to be an exercise in teambuilding for a leadership class. Our participation was being graded, and it would count as 20% of our semester grade.
It was also the craziest thing I've ever done.
I whitewater rafted. Without my glasses. And I'm here to tell you, whitewater rafting is no joke. Every time we approached a rapid, the guide instructed us which way to swim to avoid drowning or being crushed against the rocks should we fall out of the raft.
I fell out on a class III rapid. Tame, as rapids go.
I swam in a river (something I've always been scared of. I'm an ocean girl). A dead fish almost floated into me.
Video of "Surprise," the class III rapid I fell out of the raft on
New River, West Virginia
I jumped off a 30 foot cliff into the river. Blindfolded. With someone whom I'd only met that week directing me to the edge and telling me when to jump.
I completed an extreme mountain biking challenge. I hit the front brakes instead of the back and went over my handlebars. I fell over on a too-steep hill and my bike chain cut into my calf.
I rappelled down a 70 foot cliff. The instructor made me do it right-handed. I am left-handed.
Oh, did I mention I'm sorta afraid of heights?
I slept on a wooden bunk, 5 feet from a ceiling full of spiders. At night, I watched them scuttle along their webs, freaking out that they'd come down and bite me during the night. Fortunately, most nights I was too drained to care for very long.
But I did it all.
The only thing I wouldn't finish was the rock climbing exercise. I got 20 or 30 feet up and almost had a nervous breakdown. It was the end of the trip; I was banged up and mentally and physically exhausted. I didn't care if I had a belay line or not, it was too much for me.
When I hit the ground and unhooked my gear, I burst into tears, thinking I was going to get a failing grade because I didn't finish the exercise. Thinking that I'd done all those other scary things for nothing.
But you know what?
I earned an A. Because I tried.
I am a firm believer in the saying, "You aren't brave if you aren't scared." People who do dangerous or scary things and aren't the least bit scared aren't brave. They are stupid, or worse, reckless.
I was scared out of my mind, and I did it all anyway. There were a lot of people who refused to participate in any of the activities. In the end, it didn't really matter that grades were the thing motivating me.
I did it. I did it when others wouldn't. I was brave.
I would never whitewater raft or rappel again. I would never ever try to climb a mountain again unless I had some hardcore scary wildlife chasing me up it.
But I'm glad I did it all.
