Fear of Heights

Neither Pam nor I have been fans of heights. Despite a love of mountains and hiking, we weren’t the kind who enjoyed scampering along narrow trails at the edge of a cliff. Neither of us were incapacitated by heights, but the feeling was far past mere discomfort.

During out time in southern Germany (Pam was assigned to a NATO aircraft modification plant in Bavaria from 1995 to 1998) we took a number of vacation trips to Tiers, Italy. Tiers is right in the middle of the glorious Südtirol region, and is chock full of great hiking and climbing trails.

During one of our trips Pam thought we should drive to one of the ski lifts and hop a ride to mid-way up the Rosengarten ridgeline. We’d save a couple hours of hiking and get to the most beautiful part of the trail straight away.

We parked our car at the lift’s parking lot and walked up to the base of the ski lift. We paid for the ride, then were directed around a corner to the entry point for the lift. We rounded the corner and ran in to two large Tirolean gentlemen who were enthusiastically yelling something similar to “Get on! Get on!” in Italian.

Pam and I hurried to the embarking point, then noticed just exactly what it was we were embarking on. We’d thought we’d be sitting down on a chair lift, but instead were greeted by what looked like the equivalent of human milk bottle crates: a tiny platform barely big enough for two people, wrapped with a less-than-waist-high barrier of sketchy-looking metal.

We jumped on (no chance to back out with the two Tiroleans waving us on and enthusiastically but kindly shouting at us) and had the gate slammed behind us.

The lift quickly shot up the hill, and Pam and I worried whether or not we could crush the railing with our death grips. She and I commiserated there was no room to sit down on the floor, particularly when the lift carried us high over swales and ravines that left us suspended several hundred feet above ground.
enter image description here

We arrived at the top a few minutes (hours?) later, extremely weak in the knees and thankful to escape the fearsome death-trap lift. We spent the rest of the day hiking through the beautiful Rosengarten and enjoying the lovely weather.
enter image description here

We skipped the return ride down.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Some Perspective

It turns out you lose some perspective on life when your loving, kind, empathetic 12-year old son wakes up one morning and murders your wife and attacks, horribly injuring, your 16-year old daughter. It turns out you lose some perspective on your relationship with your formerly alive wife when you spend six months digging over every horrible negative, troubled aspect and event of that relationship with defense lawyers, police, and other law enforcement as everyone searches for some reason why your son snapped and did the awful things he did. This blog is an attempt to bring back some memories of the many wonderful times my wife Pam Wolosz and I had during our courtship and life together. Because in the depths of the horrors of the last six months, it's easy for me to lose perspective that there was also joy. A lot of it.
Read more

Puzzling

Image
Pam loved puzzles. No, I mean LOVED puzzles. Early in our marriage we used to spend hours working on large puzzles of outdoor vistas. I think we even knocked off a 10,000 piece monster of a view in the Italian Dolomites. We had at least 20 puzzles in the closet, including a several-thousand piece one of cheeses. Yes, cheese. She was from Wisconsin. You’d expect different because… ? Pam’s puzzle passion changed when we started having kids. Turns out having thousands of tiny cardboard pieces around drooly, grabby munchkins isn’t a recipe for a calm play time. So we traded those monsters in for kid-appropriate puzzles and continued on. We were always happy to find a vacation spot that had a pile of puzzles for us to play with. Not sure where Pam’s love of puzzles started, but I did find this great photo of her in her high school days…
Read more

One Year In

Image
Update:  Fixed all the missing images. Google and my blogging software weren't playing nicely! It’s Official. We’re one year into our new lives without Pam. As you can imagine, it’s quite hard to focus on anything other than simply surviving the holidays and the anniversary of The Event. (Yes, that’s how we’ve come to talk about it. Capital letters included.) We’ve been blessed with an incredible outpouring of support and love. From the GoFundMe campaign that’s helped pay for lawyers and doctors, to the constant messages, calls, notes, and simple positive thoughts that get sent our way—everything has been a blessing that’s helped us through an unbearable year. What I said last year when I broke the news of the awful event bears repeating: Go hug your loved ones. Life is short and unexpected things lie around every corner. Cherish those close to you, and make sure they know it. I don’t have words to express our gratitude. All I have space in my empty soul right now fo...
Read more