a wuss? Look, if I don’t make you lose all bladder control and send you running for mommy, then I’ll kill you. I’m tricky indeed…one false move is all it takes…you think that guard rail is gonna stop me?
My heart roared like a jet engine for a couple of seconds. Maybe the Rock was right. Maybe I should give up.
Hold on, I thought, logic creeping into my brain for the first time since I decided to wear hiking boots that morning. It’s far more likely that you would’ve died in a car crash on your way here. The Rock’s just trying to scare you. It always does that to people. It’s kind of like my parents, only with no money and a prettier neighborhood. The thing is, it’s NOT my parents, so it CAN’T send me to my room. Ha!
The Rock was silent.
Encouraged, I continued up the winding steps, being extra careful not to approach the guard rails. They were made of metal and looked to be firmly anchored in the granite, but the Rock’s taunt still lingered in my mind. Although I may have only weighed a flimsy one hundred and five pounds at the time, I wasn’t taking any chances. The last thing I needed was a bumpy free-fall ending with me smashing my pimply face into the windshield of my mom’s station wagon, with the Rock cackling and screaming “I told you so!” throughout the entire ordeal. But then something happened that I am certain robbed the Rock of a startling percentage of its confidence.
We’d halted again, and I was nervously looking up to see how much farther we had to go (the Rock’s most stalwart defense mechanism was the illusion of height) when my dad decided to leave the safety of the steps and venture onto an outcropping that hung from the side of the Rock like a huge granite diving board. He proceeded to stand there and survey the mountains before him like Zeus from the top of Mount Olympus. My mom urged him back to the steps in a hurry, you can imagine (he had the car keys, after all), and we got moving again before my strutting peacock of an older brother decided to find out if he actually did have wings.
But what had happened to the Rock’s big threat? My crazy father had dared the Rock to come in for the kill; he’d practically bared his chest in defiance of the Rock (the sight of which would have finally coaxed the vomit out of my stomach), and still the Rock did nothing. Was this all a colossal joke? Was the Rock the real wuss? Was I a fool for listening to it? Were prancing man-children with god complexes like my dad and older brother smarter than me? Well, that last one couldn’t be true, otherwise I’d have been more than willing to test my weight against the guard rail. But what about the rest? The seed of doubt had been planted. Now it just needed water.
Yet the Rock was not totally finished. Believe it or not, we were nearing the summit…and yes, the ground was dismally far away by then. I felt as if I’d trudged up four hundred miles of steps instead of a mere four hundred feet. Those butterflies — and their children — began to thunder back into my gut.
For this reason, I must admit that my victory that day would not have been possible without my younger brother. Twelve years old, pugnacious, temperamental, and the resident Mr. Tough Guy, he conducted himself with all the tender sweetness of a Tasmanian devil on crack. A god complex wasn’t good enough for him. I’ve never officially confirmed this, but I suspect he believes that if god(s) did indeed create all life on Earth, then someone must have created that/those god(s), and that someone was him.
But now there he was, faced with one of Mother Nature’s most imposing creations, and the God of Gods Himself — Master of All and Fearer of None — was reduced to a whimpering little boy, literally hugging the granite wall as he crept up the stairs. Loud, hysterical complaints about the terrifying vertical distance between himself and the ground echoed throughout the Sierras, and I daresay I heard several blue jays giggling amongst themselves as they soared overhead. Now I know that my younger brother is by no means afraid of heights. It took me years to learn how to walk up a single flight of stairs without a death grip on the railing, but he would always charge up ahead with my older brother. Why would this kid — excuse me, this celestial superbeing — suddenly be transformed into a knee-knocking wreck by one of those very staircases?
Why not? Kids like him, who act tough to hide the fact that they really want to pee their pants, are easy targets for the Rock. It’s why there are so few good kid actors; most of us can tell when they’re pretending. Even inanimate objects, apparently. The Rock had given up picking on me, so it had found a new victim. The Rock had given up! And I hadn’t even realized it!
For the first time in my young life, the fear that accompanied increases in elevation began to fade away. The butterflies in my innards settled to flapping around lazily. My adrenaline gland started to drift back to sleep, tossing and turning every once in a while but leaving the rest of my body undisturbed.
A little girl, no more than five years old, and her mother passed us on the trail. The girl passed us first, and to my utter amusement she was actually running as fast as her tiny legs could take her without tripping, her mother in hot pursuit. The girl was obviously oblivious to the heart-stopping drop beneath her. Meanwhile, the God of Gods Himself mewed like a panicked kitty-cat, clinging to the granite for dear life and burbling that the abyss of the Sierras would surely eat him for lunch. Yet up that little girl went, running and laughing, up up up like one of Santa’s reindeer. The Rock had defeated the God of Gods Himself, but not that little girl. For all she knew, the Rock didn’t even exist.
A dozen or so steps later, I strode out onto the railed-in slab of granite that formed the summit of the mighty Moro Rock. The clear blue sky swept around me in every direction like it had no end. The staircase I’d just ascended trickled down the back of the Rock to the parking lot, where the cars resembled the Hot Wheels I used to play with as a child. But most of all, my eyes feasted on the land, which I’d been frightened to leave ever since I stood on my bed during toddler-dom and which now lay sprawled out hundreds of feet below me. The tree-studded Sierra Nevada to the east and the shimmering Central Valley to the west…it could have been the entire world and it wouldn’t have made a difference to me. What exploded in my mind on that perfect summer morning was simply this: I had conquered the Rock.
Now all I have to do is find Dwayne Johnson and tell him that. And then run the other way.
The Legend of Buck’s Basin
The Pinky Finger: A testament to the innocence of childhood, when we would use it to make solemn vows to each other and go “wee wee wee” all the way home (though that was actually its foot-brother).
Introduction
Perseus and Andromeda…the Tortoise and the Hare…the Legend of Lake Okeechobee…sound familiar? Not the last one, I’ll bet. While the first two are immediately recognizable by much of the Western world, the latter would most likely be greeted by a sea of confused faces if it were brought up in any high school English class, even here in the United States. Why do I find it so ironic that the typical American isn’t more familiar with the Legend of Lake Okeechobee? Because of the three stories I mentioned, it’s the most American. I’m not kidding. To be more specific, it’s a Seminole Indian legend that originated amongst the tribes of the Florida Everglades and has been passed down through the generations, surviving even the “century of dishonor” perpetrated by those of us whose ancestors came over on boats. But the point is, the story is with us today, and it’s a part of the American folk tradition whether the bulk of us know it or not.
Native American folklore and I have known each other well ever since my early childhood thanks to my mother, whose efforts to provide me with endless opportunities for cultural enrichment were a hallmark of my education. It’s only now that I realize the value of such opportunities; as an American, it’s important to recognize every bit of civilization that’s thrown into the proverbial melting pot, and I definitely can’t forsake the culture and mythology of the original
