Fear

Fear is actually a human instinct God fave us to survive. Animals posses this instinct as well. When a tiger jumps out at a gazelle, the gazselle doesn't start running because it was startled by some thing jumping out at it, it runs because it doesn't want to be eaten, it wants to survive.
There are some fears that are just plain ridiculous. Like my sister, Mary for example, has a deathly fear of cats that originated for no apparent reason. And it didn't help shen some cat left a decapitated bird on our doorstep, and Mary, thinking it was one of our dog's chew toys because it was dark, picked it up. And subsequently screamed bloody murder are washed her hands for about a half hour.
But thats not really on topic, so here's a story of a somewhat ridiculous fear.
While we were on a ski vacation in Squaw Valley, my brother Brad, took me, Mary, and my other brother, Peter, up to the top of the mountain to ski a blue (intermediate) run. He'd just skiied it yesterday and it was great. And since it was a blue, we were all perfectly capable of skiing it easily.
Unbeknownst to Brad, and unfortuantely for the rest of us, the weather had changed overnight, and the great hill he'd told us about was now a sheet of ice. Now normally I don't pay too much attention to icey runs, or even hills, but this was the mother of all hills, the monster, the hill people ski down when they want to die, and it was now a sheet of...ice.
The only option was down, I mean obviously we couldn't go all the way back up, but how to get down? There are several techniques of getting yourself down this sort of hill. Firrst, you can sideslip down, turning your skiis parallel to the slope, and stepping down sideways step-by--step. It's called slideslipping because usually you take a step and slip down a foot and step down and slide and step and slide and step and slide.
On a hill like this, such a technique would be perfect, but now that it was just ice, and no snow, most likely you'd take one step and slide 20 feet before fallind over and sliding down the hill on your face.
The second technique is to take off your skies, yell, "Look out beloooow!", throuw them down first and then follow, sliding down on your butt, praying that there aren't any sharp rocks that you imght slide over.
This technique might actually work on this hill, so it was an option to keep in mind.
The third technique is to just point your skies straight down the hill and go for it. You'll hurtle down the slope at speeds that leave a trail of melted snow behind you. The people you pass will only hear the cry of terror ripping from your throat, "AAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....!!!!!" To stop yourself, you might have to throw yourself into a dsnowdrift or you might have to try to fall over without seriously injuring yourself, OR you might get luck and at the bottom of your gigantic, insane, suicidal hill, there might just be a nice, long runout. Guess what? We had a runout. Guess what else? I wasn't suicidal enough to try it.
Peter, of course, yelled, "Coowabuuungaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!" and threw himself down the side of the mountain. He made it down okay, and proceeded to fashion himself a chair out of snow to wait for the rest of uus in.
Brad, I'm sure, would've done exactly the same thing, had he not been so concerned about my and Mary's safety.
After laboring for about twenty minutes I was halfway down and thoroughly sick of that hill. Mary too, was halfway, but she looked much more terrified than sick. I had stayed with her for this long, but I was starting to get frustrated and tired of trying to convince Mary to take one more step down. Yes, were were attempted to sideslip down the mountain.
I finally became fed up with both Mary and the hill, and I pointed my skies down the mountain before my brain could scream "Waaait! You're not suicidaaaal! Remember!?" I would've been too busy screaming to hear it anyway. I actually made it down great, and it wasn't too bad. Actually it was almost fun. Almost.
Mary however, was not having as much fun. Brad, who had been below her, watched her inch-literally- down the hill for about five minutes before he hiked back up to her. By the time he reached her, She'd moved oh, about a foot and a half down the cliff. Then she froze. Not literally from cold, but she might as well have been. She was frozen from fear. Mary doesn't like heights in the first place, so being stuck waaaaaay up on an 89 degree hill, wasn't exactly fun for her.
Peter and I waited for Brad and Mary aas Brad was slowly able to coax her down another few feet. Pete and I had a snowball fight, built an igloo complete with snow furniture, dug to china, and discovered an Eskimo living several hundred feet under the snow when Brad handed Mary his helmet and began to attempt to convince her that sliding down the hill would be..."fun". Then we sat there while Mary sloooowly took off one ski, and then the other and handed them to Brad. Then she pulled out her fingers from the ice where she had clawed to stay in one place...and let go. I swear she screamed louder than me on the way down. rad skied calmly down after Mary, her skies over his shoulder. All in all, Mary sat on that hill for an hour and a half.

Your ski-maniac blogger who loves steep hills, just not icey ones,

Katy