Don’t Look Down

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”

Robert Frost

I don’t know much about phobias, but I’ve always wondered if it is normal for someone to be well into adulthood before she developed a serious uneasiness around high places. I distinctly remember the moment my discomfort began. We were living in Cedar City when we took Daughter #1 and Sons #s 1 and 2 on a hike up near Cedar Breaks National Monument. We stopped at the magnificent Point Supreme Overlook (10,350 ft. above sea level ) in awe of the spectacular red rock amphitheater below covered with hoodoos, spires, and alien rock formations. Distracted by the grandeur of nature, I barely glimpsed a flash from the corner of my eye and managed to grab the back of my almost three-year-old Son #2’s shirt as he tried to shimmy between bars of the railing and leap into the abyss. He was energized by the view; I never recovered from the trauma!

One afternoon when I was visiting my parents in Las Vegas, my dad was teasing me about my fear of heights and told me he’d be glad to have me lie down on the couch in his counseling office and use hypnotism to help eliminate the anxiety underlying my fear. But my phobia and I had come to a truce—I would tread lightly near the edges of anything with a severe drop-off, and my phobia promised not to morph into something worse like a fear of clowns or of large arachnids dropping from the ceiling into my mouth while I slept. (At least I hope that was our agreement.) As I declined my dad’s offer, his parting words to me were, “don’t look down”.

I thought of that the day when repelling off an 80-foot cliff was on the agenda at a youth conference where I was a Young Women’s leader. I had been teased so unmercifully by the Scout leaders that one afternoon I found myself hooking up to a rope and taking the first step over the edge of the imposing overhang. It was terrifying, but when I looked up, my neighbor was belaying the rope from which I hung. He kept his voice low and barely audible as he encouraged me. “You’re doing fine. Just keep walking down the face of the cliff. You’re not alone. We’ve got you.” And they did. When I reached the bottom, I unhooked my carabiner and cheered. Take That You Stupid Phobia! I admit I may have been overly proud of what actually turned out to be a minor accomplishment in light of what happened later–the moment when I discovered what real courage looked like.

With us was a brother and sister, both of whom had been blind from birth. The summer before, we’d taken approximately the same group of kids to East Canyon Resort for a Bike-Around-the-Lake adventure. I couldn’t imagine what riding a bike felt like to a sightless person—neither the brother nor the sister had any concept of what kept a two-wheeled vehicle rolling along. We spent considerable time trying to explain how the mechanism worked before we introduced them to our solution for their dilemma: bicycles built for two. It was a logical choice, but we adults on the front seats still had to remind the young people behind us to keep “pushing on those pedals”–which they each did for only a single rotation at a time. Then they had to be prompted again for the next rotation. Over and over for several miles. On the other hand, neither of the two whined nor gave any indication that they were annoyed with the constant re-instruction. From the unquenchable smiles on their faces, both had seemed to be genuinely enjoying the wind on their cheeks.

So, I wasn’t surprised when this very “game” boy insisted that he could do anything his buddies could do. However, as frightened as I had been, I couldn’t imagine the will it would take to step off the top of a precipice and began to fall without any inkling of how far down he had to drop or how long he would be suspended in the air? When the other teens heard that Michael was putting on a harness, they came running. With unspoken agreement, every adult in the camp who wasn’t at the top handling the ropes gathered at the bottom as if somehow by the power of our joint concern, we could help the boy do what seemed impossible to many of us. Warning him to “not look down” was absolutely meaningless in his case.

 All eyes were on him as he took the fateful step off the edge and began to walk his way down the cliff wall. At about 40 feet, his knee banged into an outcropping of rock which, of course, he couldn’t see. He panicked. He stopped abruptly, entwining his entire body around his rope which swayed gently back and forth bumping him lightly again and again against the rock. Refusing to move another inch, no amount of reassurance from the adults below made the slightest dent in the terror on his face.

Leaning over the edge to see what the problem was, the three men up top held a hurried conference about what was the best route to rescuing the boy. Then, looking up, we caught sight of one of the other scouts in the boy’s troop fastening on a harness and hooking into carabiners. Slowly, the second scout lowered himself until he was parallel with his petrified friend. Reaching out, he patted the young climber’s shoulder. “It’s all right, Michael,” he said. “I’m here. You’re not alone. Just breathe, and we’ll go down together.”

As we watched, the sightless boy turned in the direction of his friend’s voice. He clutched the hand on his shoulder. We could see him take several deep breaths and begin to visibly relax his muscles until he was hanging limply on the rope. Then we heard the sounds of his friend quietly whispering words of support and reassurance: “take a step left; slide your hands along the rope; careful of the rock near your head,” and they began to move closer and closer to the safety of the ground.

When they touched solid earth together, every adult in the circle surrounding them–including me–wiped surreptitious dampness from our eyes. Whoops and cheers erupted from above. He did it!!!! Michael did it!! The two boys high-fived and then threw their arms around each other, dancing as they clung together.

All of us learned something that day which had not been on the Youth Conference agenda, but which has proven to be an invaluable, ongoing lesson. Because Life regularly presents each of us with challenges with which we often lack even the slightest the experience to confront, a good friend on the other end of our rope makes a successful outcome far more likely.