Perspective Change

I’m running. Fast as I can. My feet are barely glimpsing the edges of rocks before I push off, propelling through the air towards the next stone. Rock. Ledge. JUMP. Nice! Left. Right. Faster, he’s catching on you. This is dangerous, careless; this is exhilarating. I’ve shut the part of my mind off that’s screaming fear: skinned knees, broken legs! My eyes are focused on the trail.
Then, suddenly, I arrive. Fredrik, born and raised Norwegian, catches up to me with panting breaths. “You’re too fast. You ought to do that for a living!” he jests. Fredrik had dared me to race - a two and a half mile run ending in a magnificent view from a 2,000 foot tall cliff: Preikestolen. American tourists take hours to climb this mountain; Norwegians sprint it in under half an hour. I was too uptight, too American, and too scared, he had teased. I should walk like the others and he’d see me in a few hours.
“What are you going to do when you got deported for losing a rock race to an American girl?” I had yelled, and then took off at full speed.
Here we are now, at the top and I could care less who won. “This is unbelievable,” I attempt to tell him, but my tongue is catching in my throat. Fredrik saunters over to the edge. The wind is roaring, and, being only 120 pounds, I feel like I’m about to be swept off my feet and plunged into the pulsing river below. Fredrick beckons, but I stay put. He shakes his head and his long blonde bangs swing back in the wind. He bellows at the top of his lungs out into the gap and looks back at me again, taunting. I clench my fists. No fear! One chance, one lifetime. Tentatively, one toe placed gently after another, I join him. I open wide my arms and hold my hands, palms out to the sky. I feel at one with it all, standing here in the midst of nature’s power, a flea in her grasp; the colossal rock faces, the roaring sea, the gorgeous, unending blue sky and me, all together being whipped by the great wind. In this moment, I’m alive.
“I’m on top of the world!” I shout.
Fredrik gives me a cocky smile. “It’s a Norwegian tradition to hang over the edge,” he states. He points toward some Norwegians to our left, who are laying on their bellies now, their upper bodies sticking out over the cliff’s edge while a friend or two clamps their calves to the ground. My heartbeat races and I let out a deep sigh.
“Are you kidding?!” I say, and then I smile wide and put my hands on my hips. “What are you waiting for? Grab my ankles!”