The tireless feet...

The sound of a metal bell squealed through my sleeping bag into my ears and I woke up startled inside the tent. The clock had ticked only 5:30am and after a energetic handful of peanuts, it was rappelling time. I placed my foot carefully on each rock gap and the rugged corners made my fingertips bleed. My jaws were tight and my breath heavy. I placed my left foot mid of two diagonal rocks and stretched to reach out to the boulder above my right shoulder when…my karabiner accidentally got unbuckled and the nylon rope slipped off my left palm grab! I swung in the air for a couple of seconds and dashed against the rocky mountain wall with a tremendous jerk. My rib ached and a chill ran down my spine when I looked down to the tiny trees hundreds of feet down. A little portion of the skin at the corner of my lip got scraped off and a trickle of blood rolled down my chin to my throat. I wiped it off with the back of my dusty palm and grabbed the nylon rope tightly. At this moment of my life, facing a chance of death from a close distance I realised life is valuable yet my pacing pulse confirmed to my heart that I would let a million karabiners break and a million death scares bombard my mind to be a certified trekker. In every passion there lies madness as it defies every logic that tried to prove doing this wasn’t necessary. For all the unnecessary tasks we do to achieve ‘unnecessary’ targets we need passion that no practicality can define.
There are three things that every adventurer must remove from the to-do-list. Never to get shocked, never to get scared and never to get over-confident. I won’t deny that I felt a thousand butterflies flutter in my stomach when I did my first river crossing but my senses had got numb seeing the cascading restless stream below me. The white bubbles crashed on the submerged boulders and I looked away to divert my mind.