Tuesday, December 29, 2009

"ability to be good more than to look good"






Yesterday the ladies (me + one) decided to take a walk, the goal of the walk was a neighborhood house where I bought some canna lilies last year, plants which have flourished nicely.
The house was without any plants for sale, and so as the day was nice and Zok feeds up people as if he is the witch in Hanzel & Gretel, we decided to just keep walking.
Our next goal was a beach, a beach I like to refer to as 'the secret cove' as I have only seen wallabies but never people there.
When we arrived the cove was lousy with people, a diving class I think, so as we continued on the line of jokes involved 'not so secret cove anymore'.
For some reason (I blame my walking partner) we decided to see if we could take the coast all the way back.
I am not talking beach to beach, I am talking coast line, mostly comprised of huge square boulders, that are apparently bits of cliff face, fallen to the shore.
The scenery was very pretty.
At one point, we came to a gap, a gap that would have to be jumped, my walking partner who is definitely on the brave and mighty side as well as athletic, gracefully stepped across the gap.
I thought to follow straight away, until I glanced down.
What followed was this griping feeling of fear of the like I have don't recall ever feeling before. All I could picture in my mind was pulling back my leg as I leaped, some uncontrolled action brought on by fear, and my head bashing on each side of the gap as I plummeted to the sea below.
I had complete faith my walking companion would save me, she was once a competitive swimmer (among other such super powers), but there would be the inconvenience of the hospital trip, and perhaps missing dinner, (Zok was making an excellent pasta dish).
I did finally make it across, but I am still astonished at this scaredy-cat angle of my nature, I had not known existed.
But as I said, I did jump across and when we could no longer follow the shore (please note my partner trying to scale the rock ledge to see if we indeed could keep moving forward), we instead scrambled up a cliff edge to private property, through three! yards and into the neighborhood.
I felt very Aussie.
I think as 2010 (so nice looking in print) comes on, I will hold that leap in my minds eye, and see what other unforeseen obstacles I can overcome.


2 comments:

Monte Means said...

what a great blog! please tell jeannie that the top photo made me very, very nervous. here's to jumping more obstacles in 2010.

itsmarkmitchell said...

You're very brave.