On the road leading up to the vineyard I like to hike in every morning, there’s a very, very steep hill.
The road is paved, but it’s pretty narrow — so narrow that only one car can fit at a time. So whenever one car that’s going up the road meets a car that’s going down, it’s kind of a tricky situation, to say the least. Then when you add a walker to the mix, things can get a little dicey!
But you have to walk up this long road to get to my beloved vineyard hike, so I walk it every day. The good news for me is that the cut-through to get to my vineyard is just before the super steep hill, but I can see the hill from the top of my hike, so I’ve witnessed a few incredibly complicated car negotiations!
A few days ago, I was on the descent from my hike, and I was wandering my way back to the paved road to head home when I heard this crazy and very loud scraping sound that seemed like it was coming from the steep hill. I was too low into the vineyard to have any kind of view of the hill, but the sound was so loud, and it was getting even louder. So I picked up my pace so I could make it to the edge of the vineyard to see what was going on. As the sound got even louder, I could suddenly hear a voice now, too.
It sounded like someone…yelling?
So I jogged to the edge of the vineyard, and that’s when I saw a tall thin boy on a skateboard, seriously flying down the hill! His skateboard was jacked up so he was only riding on the back wheels — and I guess it was the back of his board on the pavement that was making all of that horrible noise. But he had his arms stretched out wide, and he was shouting like he was happy!
He sped past my vantage point in a blur, and he continued down the road, and all I kept thinking was, “How is he going to stop?” Just then, I could hear a truck rumbling around the corner up ahead, and as it emerged from this canopy covering of trees, it was a dump truck!
Dump truck vs. boy speeding down an incline on a skateboard?
I couldn’t believe I was seeing this whole thing unfold in real-time, and my heart was racing as if I was the one in danger! I’m sure the boy saw the truck — it was right in front of him, so how could he miss it? And the truck even tooted his horn! Then, at the very last second, the boy bailed off of his board and rolled into this gully on the side of the road.
As soon as the noisy truck rolled passed me, I could hear the boy laughing and hooting — which was a total relief to hear. But I quickly exited the vineyard and started walking toward him. That’s when I noticed a young girl with long black hair and a small video camera pop out from behind this short stone wall on the other side of the road. She was rushing toward the kid, too, and she wasn’t laughing.
I slowed my pace a bit, but I couldn’t help from overhearing the girl shouting at the kid as the kid continued to laugh. By this point, he was up and back on his skateboard. He was rolling toward the girl to close the distance between them, and I heard him say, “You got that, right?”
I could hear her kind of flipping out on him as I walked by — she was saying what I was thinking: “Are you crazy?” But the kid wasn’t listening. He had grabbed the camera from her and I’m sure he was rewinding the scene in the camera to see it for himself.
I didn’t linger. Now that I knew the boy was OK, and he had a sensible person with him, I just picked up my pace and headed home. But I thought about what I saw for a long time. It was such an intense scene to me, and it could’ve ended so badly. But it didn’t, so that’s a good thing.
But it could have, which is the thing I always have trouble letting go of…
It’s been several days since the incident, but it crosses my mind a lot, which I guess is why I’m blogging about it now. One of the things that’s burned into my mind is how free and happy that kid looked as he whizzed by me on his skateboard. He was positively fearless and uninhibited…
I can’t imagine being in that state!
Especially when doing something so…reckless!
But that’s what bugs me. Why can’t I let go like that — not on a skateboard, obviously! But just in my regular life? Why is it easier for some people to let loose, but for me, it’s just too darn difficult?
There does seem to be a hardwiring inside of me for safety, and maybe that can never be changed. One year for Christmas, a friend gave me a sweet little picture book called “Thin Slices of Anxiety,” and it features a nervous little porcupine moving through his day with lots of tiny worries. It’s an adorable book, and it really did remind me of myself! But it was a previous reminder in the mix of my thoughts about how tightly wound I am inside — and how people who really know me can see that, too!
To me, the word reckless is negative. But, to some people, like that kid on his skateboard, that word probably provokes him like a dare. For me, the most reckless thing I can think of that I’ve done is the day I wore white jeans to a red wine tasting event with Lou! And I only wore those jeans because I always know if I get a stain on white clothing, I can get it out. So in a way, that wasn’t reckless at all….
Unfortunately, I don’t have a tidy way to wrap up this pondering in my mind or in this blog, so I’m sorry about that…
