I’ll never forget the first time I tried to climb that hill. The scars, the blood, but most of all the whimpers, are what haunt me still to this day. Can you imagine trying to do something for the first time, and not only failing miserably, but becoming so scared you develop an everlasting fear for it? Well that’s what happened to me, and I’m here to share my story.

It was a regular summer day in Southlake, Texas. Actually, it was far from normal. The novel Coronavirus had the whole word at its knees, and there were riots in the streets across the country. To keep it straight and simple, everything was a hot mess. I remember playing one of my favorite games, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow 6 Siege- an action-packed first person shooter game. A game that requires that amount of mechanical and in-game skill requires persistence and dedication. So, you could imagine how I felt when my dad walked right in and got up in my face and asked me a question that I really had no interest in.

“Do you wanna come to Montana with me and my coworkers? It’s an all boys trip and you’d be the oldest there.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure I’ll come.” With that, he left my room and closed the door behind me. I went back to my game and he went back to his office. Little did I know, if he had just not invited me, I may not be the person I am today.

A few days passed until he asked again, and detailed the trip. We would be going into rural Montana, near a city by the name of Missoula. The itinerary included hiking, white water rafting, and many other small occurrences that we would learn about on the way.
Sooner or later, we were on a plane to Missoula International. The flight was fine. We had a stop in Denver and stayed at the lounge for the layover. It was surprising to see how much traffic such a small city got.

Later, we pulled up to the house. That’s when the first thoughts clouded my head. I looked at all the rocky mountains, that fast on going river just below, and saw that there was hardly anyone nearby us. I then took a good look at all the other kids. They were much younger, but much fitter. And they all knew each other since they came from the same part of Chicago. I was the outsider in a group full of 11 year olds… great.

After a few hours of playing games on our phones and asserting our dominance, we went for a hike on a hill nearby. It was fairly steep and the soil was loose. One of the boys who had been there earlier than us had already climbed it fully once, and dared me to do it again. I humbly accepted it, not knowing what I had just put myself into.

He ran up and hung onto trees. It was mesmerising really, watching him go like that. Within a matter of seconds he was gone. Now the panic set it. If I wanted to go up, I had to take the hill or the winding path that we came down on. The path took about 10 minutes to navigate, and the hill about the same, but he would know for sure if I came up the path. So with the sick feeling in my stomach, I ran up the sand of the riverside and onto the hill, grabbing onto the first rock.

To say I slipped is an understatement. About a few feet up, I raised my arm to latch onto a large rock. Typically, the bigger the rock, the less it would move. That was not the case here. The rock gave way and down I went. I fell butt down into a pile of branches and into a pile of razor sharp pebbles. I instinctively moved my hands down to stop my fall, but ended up shredding the skin open instead. There was some blood, but it could be dealt with. But, this did make grabbing onto rocks much more difficult. I sat back for a minute, trying to catch my breath. I was too far up to go down safely, but the thought still lingered in my mind. I could go down, go back up the safer path, and just deal with the humiliation. 

After some time, I gathered myself and made my way up the hill. Now, there were much smaller rocks with hardly anything to grab onto. I had to rely on my own feet and bare hands to keep myself stable. I could see the top, and yelled out to one of the other kids that I was almost up. When I got no response, I assumed he had left and gotten tired of waiting for me. I was the oldest after all, I should’ve been able to care for myself. 

My hand was burning. I took another look at it again when I had gotten myself to a relatively safe spot. It was nothing major, just a few cuts with dry blood on them. Honestly, it looked worse than it was. I was able to see where the hill gave way to the flat land that was out rented property. I got up, shook off the dirt on my body, and started climbing up with a new motive. Even with all the doubt in my head, I had stil persevered and made it to the top. That feeling, when I climbed up and saw one of the kids just running around, that feeling was what made that trip all the worthwhile. 

A few days later when the excitement from the previous days were gone, we went out to the river for white water rafting. I had seen videos of whole boats being flipped over on waves, and people who knew how to swim getting swept away in the currents. This instilled a fear in me, just like the fear I had experienced when I was climbing that mountain. But, just as I had climbed that mountain, I was going to hit those waters on the raft with no fear. Well, maybe a little fear.