What doesn't kill us makes us stronger. Well, at least if we aren't killed, we are still alive. Stronger, maybe. Smarter, hopefully. And, perhaps, a little wiser. No matter how bad the trauma, I'd like to think that a person can find something out of a traumatic experience that is of use. If not to them personally, then perhaps to others. Thus, here is the one of my personally traumatic experiences that may be of help to others even if just for their amusement.
Note well: These experiences were arrived at through poor judgment and could have been quite fatal. Realize that your own adventures will befall you without putting yourself at unnecessary risk. Please, do not purposely try any of these experiences for yourself.
My girlfriend, K, was going on a trip to the Devil's Hole State Park and she asked me to meet her there. In retrospect that alone should've given me pause. But, being who I am, I agreed.
If you've never been there, it is a beautiful park on the American side of the Niagara Gorge that not only provides a breathtaking view of the gorge and the rapids, but also a long stairway that you can take down to the Niagara River. Looking to get away from the crowd, K and I took the stairs and then walked along the river.
The walls of the gorge are made up of layers of shale and sandstone as well as some limestone with a cap-rock of dolomite. There are tremendous dolomite boulders at the bottom of the gorge along the path that fell after wind and water had eroded the shale below them. Down near the path, the rocks provided a tempting wall to climb and I decided to take them up on that challenge.
I was about seven feet up when the wall presented an overhang. Considering that I had done well up to that point, and my girlfriend was watching, I figured I should stretch and pull myself up. What I did not consider was how I would get back down.
Looking back over the edge as best I could, I did not see the path and I only imagined twisting my ankle of even breaking my leg if I went back down blind... hey, those were some nasty looking boulders on that path! For some horrible reason, I thought climbing up a shale gorge was a much better idea.
The first challenge I encountered was dwelling on my situation and freaking out. Fortunately, I remembered the movie "Capricorn One." When one of the three astronauts was climbing up a rock-face, the astronaut told a long joke while he climbed to keep himself from freaking out. It really worked! Even later, when things got dire, telling long jokes kept me distracted from the true gravity of my situation...
This brings me to the second challenge; friction or the lack thereof. The first 20 or 30 feet up the gorge wasn't so bad. Then I noticed that the angle of the side of the gorge was, quite naturally, getting increasingly steeper the higher I went. This did not seem at first to be much of a concern until the rock walls started to crumble in my hands. Worse was around 50 feet when I started sliding back down.
I realized that if I began to slide and did not stop, by the time I got to the bottom I would end up with worse than a twisted ankle. The image of my twisted body broken across the rocks was more than enough to initiate a new strategy. Whenever I felt I was sliding, I would press my forearms and my legs into the shale surface... which would catch a hold of me and stop my descent at the cost of some skin and blood.
The third and final challenge was breathing. Every time a downward descent would begin, shale would crumble around me until I managed to grind myself to a halt. Much of the crumbled shale would turn into a cloud of dust that swirled around me. I didn't quite realize the hazard until I started to cough and began an almost immediate second descent. Fortunately, the solution was readily available. By tucking down my face into the collar of my sweat-soaked t-shirt, I was afforded a decent though foul air filter.
When I finally reached the top and climbed over the guard rail, from the wrong side, and looked down it was hard to believe what I had just experienced. Certainly I was so dazed that I was not aware of anyone around me. When I turned to go to the restroom, I blundered through a wedding party apparently there for a scenic backdrop for their pictures. I remember hearing some gasps but I thought it was because they thought I was being a jerk. It was not until I got to the restroom mirror that I discovered how I appeared.
From head to toe, I was covered in shale dust which gave my hair and my skin a gray tint. At my elbows and knees, streaks of blood contrasted brilliantly against my gray skin. I began laughing so hard that I coughed up a bunch of black phlegm and I shook a cloud of dust out of my hair.
What is there to learn? Well, aside from "don't climb the Niagara Gorge," I know that survival can be won by keeping a clear head, making sacrifices, and being resourceful. Hmm... did I really have to climb the gorge to learn that? Okay, not really. Then perhaps the best lesson here is that, if you survive, you really should try to laugh about it. It might help knock off some of the darkness and help clean out some of the crap that got inside.
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