Into Thin Air - Part 1
“Please, Nana!” my 12-year-old grandson begs. “Please!”
I look at his adorable face and the faces of my two sons. Perhaps, I fear, it is a plot to rid themselves of the old lady.
“I’m afraid of heights,” I remind them.
We are standing outside a log building in Denali, Alaska. Smoke from a nearby forest fire clouds the mountains around us.
“You can do it,” my younger son says. He can be annoyingly chipper sometimes. “I’ve done it twice and it’s very relaxing.”
“Just don’t look down,” my older son says. He loves to push me to the edge of my abilities and my sanity.
“I used to teach it,” our trusted guide says. “Just sit down, lift your feet and enjoy.” He turns to my sons. “Of all the extreme sports, it is the easiest to get insurance for.”
Somehow, that does not reassure me.
The van is waiting. My progeny is waiting. The clerk is waiting with a pen and a form that says No matter what happens, it’s not our fault.
“I want my ashes scattered in the Santa Catalina Mountains,” I tell them as I sign the paper.
Suddenly, I am four-wheeling along what appears to be a sorry excuse for a game trail, bad words forming in my head.
“No one said anything about four-wheeling,” I shout over the sound of rocks spitting behind us and the rattling in my body. My aging bladder reminds me I should not have had that Diet Coke before we left.
My sons and grandson whoop with glee as our driver ascends yet another hill.
I’m not even there yet and every muscle, bone, organ and cell in my body is screaming for mercy. I wonder if anyone will miss me when I die out here in this beautiful, but I suspect deadly, forest.
After about three miles the four-wheeler spins to a stop in front of a platform with helmets, harnesses and other instruments of torture hanging on wooden pegs.
As a young woman tugs the helmet onto my head, I think This will make a nice bowl for my brains when they are splattered across the Alaska wild
© Susan Luzader 2022