Dangling Man

I am not an adventurous person. My inconspicuous, insignificant and humble veins rarely feel an overwhelming surge of adrenaline at the sight of anything even remotely resembling a distant relative of what goes under the popular name of Risk. Now do not mistake me for a coward. I’d like to believe in my willingness to look danger in the eye. Alright..perhaps that’s just a little away from the truth. But I am darn sure that I would look at danger from somewhere in the vicinity. It is just that I am not the kind of person who is likely to say, “ Danger is my middle name” (and look stern while saying it too).

I am not an adventurous person. Which is why I was not exactly hopping all over the place with joy like a newly- become father kangaroo when they told me that I had to accompany a team of our new recruits on an Outdoor Learning Program. Read “spend the better part of the day in the great wide open and expose my person (now don’t you DARE read a pun there) to considerable physical exertion-atleast for an ‘indoors’ person like me. A big consolation was that a friend would also be coming with me.

There were quite a few tasks that demanding my exertion- river crossing, rappelling, a trek and a few others which I don’t really remember (that’s because I didn’t take part in them) . Rappelling was quite a nervous experience.

The area was the top of a cliff. Our job- we had climbed up, now we had to scale down!! Under normal circumstances, I would have declined the adventure. But you how it is when you are in a group…you just HAVE to show them that you are not chicken..moreover, I should admit that there was the thrill of trying out something new. And now I could feel the adrenaline surging. On came the gear -gloves, something that looked like a safety girdle around my waist, and a cord in my hands. I listened very carefully to the instructions. Sure I could do it. I just had to follow the instructions. Everything would be cool if I would just lean back, position myself perpendicular to the wall of the cliff and just hop, skip and jump down. My mind raced back to Stallone doing something similar in Cliffhanger. And this was just a puny 100 metre high cliff. I hobbled over to the edge of the cliff and turned my back to the great wide open that beckoned. Eased myself down. Looked up at the people watchin me-anxious faces. Looked downt to the ground below- hard rock. My eyes thought that it would be better if they devoted their attention to the face of the cliff that was inches away from them. My feet felt rubble beneath them and started acting funny. I was losing my footing. I could not climb back up now. “Just lean back”, the instructor said. Sure, just come over to this side and try for yourself I wanted to retort! I could not do that. I did not do that. I eased myself further down. Lost contro and I hit my left leg against a blessed piece of rock that was jutting out. Ouch!. Looked below again. Still over 50 metres to go. I would not even get a foothold anywhere on the wall below me. Just hop skip and jump. Well, I said my prayers, looked at the belt that held me to the rope and started sliding down. The cord I held whirred smoothly through my palms .It was smooth scaling after that. Descending was easy and before I realized it, I was once again standing straight up like normal people do. I escaped with just a slight cut to my leg. My trousers however, survived the onslaught.

If rappelling was a humbling experience, then climbing the Russian ladder was embarrassing. This was a dangling ladder. They had tied it to a tree. Now don’t ask why they call it a Russian ladder. Compared to climbing down a cliff, this looked like a pushpver. I said I’d try it and the instructor told me what to do. Imagine! He was telling me how to climb a ladder. My hands wrapped themselves around the chains that held the ladder and my right leg climbed up to the first rung. For a second all was still. Then:
1)All hell broke loose.
2)The ladder started doing the twist.
3) My torso felt that it was bad on its part to let the ladder dance alone and so it too joined the party.
4) My second leg followed its counterpart to the first rung.
5) Soon the whole ladder and ofcourse, the person on the ladder too, were all over the place. I never knew I could use a ladder as a swing.
6)I tried to restrain the mad ladder and it took me a while before I could climb the next step.
7) I climed the next rung

Repeat steps 1-7

Four rungs like this and I gave up the battle. Anymore shaking and I would have Parkinsons before my time. So I wisely chose to retreat and climb down. The rest of the afternoon was spent in peace just chatting away with my friend.

It was around 4 PM when we left the place. My hands and legs had begun their whining. But my mind was quite cheerful. I may not be the most adventurous person I know, but hey, it felt good to be dangling in mid-air for a while.

Shain