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THE LAST FIVE MINUTESBy: Myles Delfin / NES - GEO (3 pages) view printer friendly version "On a particularly rainy day just recently, the air was dripping with humidity as I stared into nothing, in the middle of nowhere. I was up to my knees in mud and goop and lost on an angled slope, in the upper reaches of Mt. Banahaw. I had been theorizing alone in the jungle for the past hour or so, looking for a connection to a trail known as the Crystallino. My thought was that I could connect the standard trail to my ideal sightseeing "trekking highway". So, there I was, struggling to find stable footing amidst the slippery roots and fallen branches, thinking to myself that I would surely break through to open ground within the next five minutes! Of course, I hadn't fully accepted the fact then that I had been telling myself that for over an hour. My pack was getting heavier and heavier by the minute as water started to seep through to my haphazardly "plastic bagged" gear. There was an unmistakable "slushy" feeling in my bag as I collapsed against a rotten tree trunk. At that point, I pretty much had my butt handed to me on a silver platter by the mountain that many regard dismissively as "moderately strenuous". In the pursuit of mind melting, body-warping experiences like this, we often find ourselves in a constant state of decision-making hell. Should I jump down the waterfall? Will it smash me against the jagged rocks down there, and turn me into jambalaya sauce? The possibilities are endless and the prospect of a sad, miserable, and untimely departure, five minutes in the wrong direction is often greatly increased by exploratory hubris. But can adventurers really be blamed for their actions in the conduct of searching for, well, adventure? Adventure, as they say, is not without risk and the possibility of withering away in some remote jungle is the whole point of the entire exercise. Yes, of course, adventure is all that and more but only if we were all trappers in some frontier land, or maybe if your name happens to be Børge Ousland, or Tomaz Humar! Plainly, you have to be some sort of a professional to be able to take the word "adventure" quite seriously. Otherwise, our mothers cancel our allowances, our fathers take away our pride, and our girlfriends break up with us and run away with some "dude" from gym class! It's a really scary proposition that can all be easily averted by simply staying on the trail, and by resisting the temptation to go on safari each time we see forest cover.
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© 2003 Team Geostride Adventure.
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