Trail Ridge Road? No no no no. They have told me it’s scary. There are cliffs. Apparently pretty dramatic ones. My mother, who is afraid of heights, went up there once and now she’s afraid to drive on any part of the Rockies. Even people generally considered “normal” and not paranoid or unstable say Trail Ridge Road is “pretty scary” but that you should be all right. As long as …
As long as what? As long as you don’t drive over the edge of the cliff, right? That’s what you were thinking! And that’s a chance I just can’t take. And there’s a second thing:
I Don’t Enjoy Being Scared by Trail Ridge Road!
I don’t want to take a trip which will mean the near-certainty of being scared out of my wits. Back in the 90’s I remember going to see the Grand Canyon and feeling like it was going to suck me right down into its depths. Riding on a tour bus along the rim, I was thinking the driver would certainly go crazy and plunge us over. I was thirty years old. “Oh, oh,” I silently thought. “Oh, at least I had thirty good years. He’ll probably do it right here at this bend where the road curves and if you go straight you’re going down. Oh, oh, wow, he turned, but right up there there’s another place … “
At that point on our drive along the Grand Canyon’s rim, my husband looked at me. “Are you okay?”
Not exactly.
Well, one thing I do know …
When You’re Crazy-Paranoid …
- You must keep doing what the rational person would do, otherwise, eventually you’ll be unable to get out of bed, and
- You’d better not let anyone else know that you’re scared, because, mystically, if anyone finds out that you’re terrified, it will make it worse.
“I’m fine,” I told him.
But that Doesn’t Mean I’m going up to Trail Ridge Road
I’m probably going to be fine either way, but I’ve decided that I will avoid the Trail Ridge Road if at all possible. If I find myself in a position where the rational person would just go … say I’m traveling with a group of people and they all are going up there and the only way to avoid driving with them is to walk home … I suppose I’ll go. But if not, I’ll avoid it. I think that’s the right thing to do.
You don’t think I should go up there voluntarily, do you?
(This story was later continued with my eventual going to Trail Ridge Road about a year later.)
