The Time I Learned I'd Never Climb Mount Everest

I am not accustomed to snow.  Rather, I should say that I wasn't accustomed to snow, I've had a lot of lessons about it since moving to a place where I'm often forced to deal with it for more than one or two days a year and in more copious quantities than the light dustings I saw as a kid.

Let me tell you a little about snow.  

When I was a kid, I thought it was awesome.  I was wrong.  Snow is not awesome.  It's about the most non-awesome thing that exists, second only to ice.  Unfortunately the two go hand in hand, making them almost the same thing in my mind.

It's pretty when it's falling.  It's pretty in the morning, when you look at the blanket of it covering the ground, untouched.  Then it ceases to be pretty.  It's just dirty, messy, nastiness that gets trampled down and refreezes to form ice.

If I'm at home with my pajamas, my couch, and Gus, this is fine.  However, on days that I have to work, I despise snow.  

So here's a little adventure I had the first time it snowed here.  It was also the first time that I really, truly accepted the fact that I would never even attempt to climb Mount Everest.

Outside my apartment, leading up to the main road that I need to get on in order to get to work, there is a sidewalk that runs up a sloping hill.  It's not that bad of a hill on a regular basis.  It's actually a nice little hill.  Here's what it looks like normally:

(Ok, so maybe there aren't really any happy flowers...it's actually lined with dog poo and pieces of people's cars who have misjudged if it was their turn to go or not...but the flowers are nicer.)

I realized, however, that my happy little hill has a dark side when it's covered in a blanket of snow and ice.  The first morning that I had to walk to school after a ridiculous (in my opinion) snowfall, I wasn't too sure about things.  I toddled across the parking lot and made my way to the sidewalk.  I looked up the little hill that I had climbed so many times before.  Except now it wasn't a happy little hill.  Now it looked more like this:

Now that the little hill was covered in ice, and taking into consideration that I had experienced enough difficulty toddling over the flat parking lot, this was a major obstacle.

But I had to get to work...so I started up the little hill.  And then something strange happened...I slid back down.  I realized this wasn't going to be easy at all.  I started up the little hill again, a little faster and leaning forward.  

And I slid back down.

Third time's a charm, right?  So I started up again, a little faster and leaning so far forward that Icould have almost been crawling up the hill (and I was considering that).  I reached my salvation.  A guide wire coming down from one of the electrical poles, and I clung to it.  

So here I was, clinging to the guide wire.  If I let go, I was going to slide back down the hill.  For me, that wasn't an option.  I realized, however, that going forward wasn't a choice that was mine to make either.  So I just stayed there...at first feeling very, very sad and sorry for myself.  I couldn't go up and I didn't want to go down and the stupid snow had left me with no other option than to stay there, feeling pathetic, and hanging from that guide wire like a fish on a line.

I wasn't really sure how long I could stay there, though.  I did have to get to work eventually.  I was going to have to solve this problem because hanging on the guide wire was not going to get me anywhere in life.  

Then I realized how nice and salted the roads were.  There was hardly any snow at all on them...it was nothing like the treacherous sidewalk.  Finally, I made a decision.  I let go of my precious wire and slid backwards down the hill, like I had predicted I would do.  I toddled off the sidewalk and into the road.  Bingo!  I could walk up the road!

And I did.  And to anyone who honked at me, I do not apologize for any gestures you may have found offensive.  When they learn to salt the sidewalks as generously as they do the road, I'll consider using them when it snows.

I know now, though, that if I could not climb my little hill in the snow, there's absolutely nothing in me that would even DREAM of trying to climb Mount Everest.