In the course of a lifetime many many different things happen to us if we are lucky. I've met some people who were just incredibly bored with their lives from beginning to end.
That was not me.
Mine was just the opposite. By the time I was 40 I wondered if I could survive any more adventures and wonderful or crazy things happening in my life?
I realized in some ways I had a minor case of PTSD just from living my very adventurous life. I suppose many people wouldn't be brave enough to live a life like mine. But, after the lives of my Great Grandfather, my Grandfather and my father I realized they were all at core made of very tough stuff in the end and all the things that as a child terrified me about them were exactly the same qualities in myself as an adult that saw me through both the worst and the best of times.
I don't think I'm alone being overwhelmed with my life. I guess I prefer being overwhelmed to being bored to death like most people are who are afraid of their shadows. I've met a lot of these.
I think the 1950s (when I was 2 to 11) were so boring for me as an only child that I made up for that boring time by actually really living my life from age 12 onwards to now. And my life still hasn't stopped being an ongoing adventure even now. I still ski and ride my Dualsport motorcycle and travel the world even now with my family and friends. Life in the end is an adventure! If you can, live that adventure to it's fullest. You do it for all mankind! Remember them always in your thoughts and prayers 24 hours a day!
Recently, I was out at a Thai Restaurant with Friends and my best friend and I were talking about our visit to Chitwan National Park on the Terai or Nepal which borders India. He was saying he didn't trust the 18 year old guide who was about 5 feet tall and very thin which met our Ox Cart that we rode in when we first got off the bus in the Chitwan National Park Area when we rode there from Katmandu. So, he stayed in a different hotel than we did in Chitwan. Haley's comet was visible at night when we were there likely in March 1986. During the day we went on Elephant rides across the river and out into country where there are White Rhinos and Tigers and large snakes living there.
Krishna at one point when we were walking one day across the river said, "Be very careful! It is white rhino mating season and if they see you they will kill you!" This scared my 12 year old step daughter who was a little heavy then, so she ran up the nearest tree in fright. I told her as she got on branches near the top of the tree smaller than my little finger that she was climbing on too small of branches. Too late! She came down the tree head first towards the ground. As a good step father I knew to catch her to save her life because she fell 20 to 30 feet would break my back but I began to brace for that. But, luckily life or God Saved my back as her ample hips caught in between larger branches as she fell head first and so all I had to do was to make sure her head didn't strike the tree. Thank God she was all right except for where a broken branch gashed her side where it was bleeding. But, it was not a serious or fatal wound so thank God.
Later, we put my 10 year old son and my 12 year old step daughter high enough into a safe tree with safe sized limbs and my wife and I tried to get good pictures of White Rhinos (we never did). But, when we found two Rhinos the saw or heard or smelled us and ran to attack us. So, I pushed my wife up a tree and almost got run over by a Rhino chasing me also. I barely got up a tree big enough so the Rhino couldn't knock it down by hitting it trying to kill me because my arm almost dislocated when I first tried to go up it at my shoulder. Luckily, the horn missed my rear end and instead the rhino tried to ram the tree to knock me out of it. I held on for dear life as the rhino rammed the tree several times before he eventually snorted at me in disgust and slowly wandered away.
Later, Krishna, our guide told us about all the westerners from Europe and the U.S. and Canada that had died trying to take pictures of Rhinos in Chitwan National Park. First, the Rhino splits them up the middle with his horn and then throws them to the ground and smashes their chests and heads with his front hooves just like American Buffalo do which are the most fatal animals in the U.S. statistically to humans, especially in places like Yellowstone and other areas where there are herds of wild buffalo in the U.S.
Looking back at when I was only 37 and doing this with my family sometimes I wonder what I was thinking as I run all this through my head now. But then there were amazing experiences like the monkey stealing my wife's orange soda bottle at the hotel and drinking it and the cool pictures we got of that too.
However, I think the most terrifying animals I ever saw the whole trip to India and Nepal besides some humans were tribes of wild monkeys that can attack any humans that offend their sensibilities. Single or lone monkeys were usually okay but in groups monkeys were the scariest animals I ever saw in Asia much moreso than Rhinos because of the ways they attack with teeth and claws all at once in groups of 30, 50 or even 100.
It's amazing what we survive in our lives!
No comments:
Post a Comment