When hills become mountains, and other life lessons from childhood
I paused at the top of the hill, my right foot pressed back against the coaster brake on my bicycle. To my 12-year-old eyes, the hill in the park was a mountain and the slope impossibly steep.
When I returned to my hometown five decades later, almost everything seemed smaller: my family home, the public swimming pool. But not that hill. No wonder I’d hesitated. It was at least 15 feet high and angled at about 35 degrees. There were trees to the left and rocks to the right.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onChildhood venues often seem diminished when revisited as an adult. But some may loom just as large or larger, both mentally and physically.
Dave went first. The tires on his bike bounced as he flew down the hill and sped along the creek.
I was next.
Instant speed. Blurred vision. I was flying downhill. Then a sinking back to earth, back to horizontal. I bounced along the path, clutching the handlebars in a death grip. I skidded to a stop next to Dave. Scott followed.
We laughed for a few minutes, draining the adrenaline. We didn’t know it then, but we’d face many similar passages – leaving home, getting married, starting a new job. They, too, would cause us to pause and collect our courage before we launched down the trails of our lives.
I paused at the top of the hill, my right foot pressed back against the coaster brake on my bicycle. All I needed to do was lift my foot, and I would be swept down the hill. But I paused. To my 12-year-old eyes, the hill was a mountain and the slope impossibly steep.
The hill was at the back of the tennis courts in the park. Even though our small Kansas town was in the middle of a prairie, the park, just a block off Main Street, sank into the ground like a bowl. Old elm trees filled the basin, making it shady and cool. A small creek ran through the bottom. We often rode our bikes there.
On this day, we’d gone to the park and found a new challenge. Visitors had been taking a shortcut from the creek path up the hill to the tennis courts, and a faint dirt trail had formed on the hillside.
Why We Wrote This
A story focused onChildhood venues often seem diminished when revisited as an adult. But some may loom just as large or larger, both mentally and physically.
What if we raced down it?
***
When I returned to my hometown more than five decades later, I wanted to see three places: my family home, the public swimming pool, and that hill in the park. The passage of time has a way of distorting things, and I wanted to compare my recollection with reality.
Our house seemed much smaller than I remembered. I couldn’t imagine a family of seven living inside, and I certainly couldn’t picture playing pickup games of football with my friends on the postage-stamp front lawn. Our house had been on the very edge of town. Next to it was an open field where I had driven the family car in circles, learning to use the clutch to shift the “three-on-the-tree” standard transmission. Now a house occupied that field.
I had a similar take on the public swimming pool. I had spent hundreds of hours in that pool, but in the 1960s, it had seemed much larger, capable of holding far more yelling, laughing kids than space would actually allow. The high diving board, which had given us such a different perspective on our neighborhood, was gone.
While our house and the swimming pool were smaller than I remembered, my memory of the hill in the park was still pretty accurate.
When my friends and I had first paused at the top of that hill, cars did not routinely have seat belts and bicyclists did not have helmets. More than half a century later, I stood once more at the top of that hill, looking down, but this time with a different set of eyes and an altered frame of reference. No wonder I’d held tight against the brake as a young boy.
Now, the risks seemed more obvious, even larger than we’d imagined as kids. With adult judgment, I could see the hill was at least 15 feet high and angled at about 35 degrees. There was plenty of slope to gain speed, to set up potential disaster. There were trees to the left and the creek with rocks to the right.
***
We pedaled to the base of the hill and walked our bikes up. They were old bikes, passed down through families and often through the neighborhood. They’d been scarred by spills, beaten by mishaps. We didn’t care. They were our tickets to freedom and adventure.
Pushing our bikes to the top made us aware of the challenge. We knew that once we started down, there was no stopping or turning back. And right at the bottom of the hill, we would have to steer left to avoid dumping into the creek.
Dave went first. The tires on his bike bounced as he flew down the hill and along the creek, the momentum carrying him most of the way across the park.
I was next.
My heart was pounding. I balanced on the edge for a moment. Then I released the brake and yielded myself to gravity.
Instant speed. Blurred vision. It felt as though I were falling, flying down the hill. Then a sinking back to the earth, back to horizontal. I bounced along the walking path, the bumps rattling my teeth, my hands clutching the handlebars in a death grip. I skidded to a stop next to Dave. Scott followed.
The three of us spent several minutes laughing, draining off the adrenaline. We had met the childhood challenge of riding our bikes down the steep hill.
We didn’t know it then, but we’d face many similar passages over the years – leaving home, getting married, moving to a different town, starting a new job, and many others – that would cause us to pause at the edge and collect our courage before we launched ourselves down the trails of our lives.
