Creative Writing - Two Wire

Having to face your fear in a compulsory activity sounds pretty scary, right? Well, that happened to me on the Year 10 Camp. My group and I were hiking through the forest along wet, muddy trails. The mud squelched under my shoes, which were getting dirtier by the second. The rush of river water got louder and louder as we approached an activity I thought I was prepared for; well, I was wrong.

A big phobia of mine is potamophobia - the fear of bodies of running water. Y’know, like rivers. You could easily get swept away, then who knows what’ll happen to you. At the activity we’d arrived at, we had to cross a large river. Using only a wire for our hands to grip and a wire under our feet. While sure, we were harnessed, it still felt dangerous.

As you can probably guess, I was shaking like a frightened puppy, though a few of my friends reassured me I would be fine. A wave of anxiety crashed over me as I offered to put on one of the first harnesses. Why I thought this was a good idea, I don’t know. I stood upon the wooden platform as the leader clipped my harness to the upper wire.

Don’t look down, I repeated to myself as I started to walk on the wire, don’t look down. The crash of the water against the rocks was overwhelming, as was the smell of fresh water mixed with the forest aroma. Despite my own thoughts, I looked down to see where my feet were - and man was that a long drop. Even though I knew otherwise, I felt like if I fell, the harness would snap clean off and I’d plummet into the water. Well, until I actually fell, that is. I sat there dangling for a moment as I processed what just happened, before doing what the instructors had told me to do if I fell. I sat back upon the cold, rough surface of the lower wire and put up one of my feet. The only problem is that sometimes my feet have a habit of literally dislocating themselves if I put them in the wrong position. Pain like a knife stabbing through my foot hit, and I quickly put my foot down and rose the other one back up to the wire. That one, thankfully, didn’t decide to dislocate on me and I managed to pull myself back up to a standing position.

After what seemed like an hour - in reality, it was only around a minute or two - I finally made it to the other side of the river. An instructor unclipped me, and I waited patiently for my bag to be sent across on the pulley. My gloves were in there, and my hands were icicles at that point from holding onto the cold metal wire for so long. I watched the others come across until a few of my friends had made it, then we began to talk while my hands warmed up. After everyone had made it across, we began on our next trek through the forest.

I handled this situation much better than I thought I would - maybe I’m not so scared of rivers after all. Even so, it felt nice to know that it is possible to conquer fears, no matter the irrationality.