bravery/stupidity

So I remember when Oprah, now you know how I feel about Oprah, defined bravery. Bravery is not being fearless. On the contrary, bravery is doing something in spite of your fear. Therefore, in order to be brave, one first must be afraid. Today was FULL of "brave" moments.

My roomate invited me to hike the Gorges du Verdon with her and her friends. This is known as the "Grand Canyon of France." All she told me about it was that you shouldn't have a fear of heights. There was no rock climbing apparently, but there were "escaliers" that one had to climb. They later started using the word "ladder" to describe this. I had horrible nightmares the night before of some ladder going down a steep cliff. Eeep!

Driving to our hostel, I saw the beautiful but VERY intimidating canyon, with the Verdon river swimming threw about 1500 meters below us. The hike was not challenging in that I am super exhausted/tired right now. Psychologically though, it was scary and very very challenging.

We started off this morning on the path, which immediately plummets into the canyon. Not plummet, perhaps, but it is a very steep descent. And it's SO rocky! Like these evil slippery flat rocks as well as loose ones. Ahh, too many tibia memories to describe. So I was really really nervous...what the heck am I getting myself into! About 1/2 an hour later we had finished with that passage. But then whenever you descend, you will have to monte (go up) encore! So then we started climbing up the path...again, it's all rocks, very steep. HOOF I was dripping with sweat. Then we get to this ALL rock, slanted, steep drop off to a cliff part. Everyone else calmly walked across the slipery flat rock, while I was completely freaked out. But still managed my way across. At some points, we had to just hold on the cable attached to the rocks and make our way around the cliffs, going down totally loose rocks (what killed my tibia) or all flat slanted rock. Eeep!

Then there was the "ladder." In fact it was a stair case, but basically ya, it's straight down. After having survived everything else, this ladder I had been dreading turned out to be okay. We ate lunch on by the river and then started going back up again. We went through some caves to come out through the other side to a beautiful view! The canyon is breathtaking...but so are the cliffs that are about 6 inches from where you're walking. :-(

We finally got to the top where I thought the car was parked, only to see that we still had to hike another 30 STEEP minutes to get to it. At this point I asked my American friends how difficult the hike is. "Oh it's very difficult," said the woman. (They are from Oregon and have done a lot of hiking.) Normally, on a U.S. trail you wouldn't have all that exposed area without rails..etc. She said she had been thinking about me all day, wondering how the midwesterner had made out.

I kept telling my hiking buddies, "Illinois is FLAT" haha. I made out okay....but really I think by luck. On the one hand, I am thrilled to have completed this 6 hour hike...on the other hand, I would NEVER for any amount of money do it again. I just don't understand how more people don't die from hiking? All I could think was, if you fell right now, you would just fall off the cliff and die. End of story. Or if you really hurt yourself, no one would be able to get to you for hours.

Soooo I don't know how far my hiking career will go. At best, the hike is "medium difficulty" at worst it is classified under "very difficult" hikes in this region. I think I will stick to the easy ones from now on.

But I can honestly say I was brave today. Though had anything happened, I would have been labeled differently no doubt.

The drive back home (2 hours) was amazing. A sunset, very cute towns, classical music playing. Again you wonder, "How did I get here?"