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The Snowy white mountains was a trip I will never forget. Sure, my family’s been on other adventures and hikes, but this was the most memorable. Why? Because of the dangers, the thrill, and the fear that I’ve never experienced before. Because it was a time my family almost got a free helicopter ride.

It was the summer of 2016, when my family decided that our next trip would be to Tennessee. I was 9 at the time, and considering they still like to keep our vacations as surprises now, back then wasn’t an exception either. I remember getting on the airplane, completely surprised and unaware of what we were going to do once we got to Arizona. I didn’t even know what was there! And that excitement stuck with me all the way to the drive up in the snowy white mountains, all the way to the Appalachian trail.

As soon as my dad parked the car, I leaped out. A 3 hour drive can really tire you out, especially only a day after getting off the plane. Without wanting to wait, I followed my brother, running towards the crooked and wooden sign that read “Trail”.

My dad wasn’t so sure about going on this one, he thought it looked a little sketchy considering the path was nearly invisible and started off as only a small, steep, foot long dirt way. But, after my brother tried to convince my parents, my mom thankfully stepped in to say, “If Tom [my friend’s dad who recommended the trail] did it, we can too. Come on, it’ll probably be fine”. And so, our trip began, the part we would remember at least, the part where we headed straight into trouble.

After an hour in, my legs were starting to hurt. My dad made a joke earlier when we had to hop over a little stream, “Maybe this is the waterfall at the end of the trail! Guess we can turn around now!” I laughed then but, when I look back now, we really should’ve taken that advice.

3 hours in and I couldn’t take it anymore. Wasn’t this trail only supposed to take 2 hours? Were we just slow? “Keziah look! Mamma, pappa, do you see it?” my brother yelled over to us. And, when I looked over at where he was pointing, my heart almost leaped out of my chest. No. No, no, no, no. My dad was just talking about a guy in the news who had to fight off a bear when he went on a forest run, but I did not expect to see them here. Not one, but two little cubs were just a few meters far to the left from us. Sure, I’ve seen cubs in zoos before, but this was different. I wanted to get closer but at the same time, hide behind my mom and run away. If the cubs were here, their mother had to be close too. If a bear just attacked a random guy in the woods for no reason, I didn’t want to think about what would happen to us, next to her cubs, in the forest. That feeling of urgency will never leave me. I will never forget when I saw those cubs just a couple meters away. The rush of wonder at seeing them without any glass casings. The excitement of having truly found them on our own in nature, in their natural habitat. But at the same time, I felt the need to tippy-toe for the next mile until we were far away from any bears. This was a moment that could define my experience on the trail. Not because I saw the bears, but the feeling I had when I saw them. The joy, the excitement, and the fear, is what helped me remember this experience. Is what I look forward to for every trip from now on.

For the next hour, we got to occupy ourselves by talking about different bear species and other animals that could be here. Meaning, the other dangers we could start worrying about too. Just as I was about to tell my family about the bear we learned about in school that week, we turned a little corner, which opened up to a view more gorgeous than I had ever seen in my life. I couldn’t believe we were actually seeing this. The entire trail was beautiful from the start, every second of it, from the canopies of trees, and the arch of the trail. But that wasn’t anything compared to this. This was nearly just like a black hole, and I couldn’t even see to the bottom of it. It felt like I was walking on the rim of the heart of the mountain. As I looked down, I remember my mom calling over to me telling me to stay away from the edge. It was marvelous, even as I looked over for just an instant, before backing up. You could see the trees folding into the center, the leaves brushing over them, the rocks jutting out along with other miniature cliffs all going towards the center of the hole. That exhilaration and fear made me wonder if I had ever seen anything more amazing, if I had ever seen anything so scary and alluring all at once. I could never imagine forgetting such an overwhelming site in my life.

But, once we passed that spot we were beyond tired. It had been 5 hours since we started the trail and we were getting nowhere! My dad tried in vain to get signal and call someone from the tourist center. And my brother tried to pull up a map on google to figure out where we were, assuming we entered the wrong trail considering our hasty entrance into this one. We couldn’t take it anymore, we were too tired, and the sun was already beginning to go down, I was barely even sure I could walk all the way back there. My parents decided we should turn around and get back as fast as we could before it got dark.

We ran back, or as fast as we could run considering that some areas of the path were so small that we couldn’t even stand in the same spot together, while still attempting to get signal. And finally, a miracle happened! After the hundredth time, my dad finally got on the phone with a worker at the center.

Apparently, we had gotten on a trail that had been temporarily closed due to a recent, and frequently occurring wildfire! And to top it all off, this was an expert trail, the Appalachian trail! We were in no way fit for this hike considering we had only brought small water bottles in a backpack, and already finished them all. The tour guide on the phone even said that he would keep others informed on our situation and if we didn’t get back within 3 or 4 hours, he would send a helicopter to rescue us! I couldn’t believe this! We were to the point where we might even need a search and rescue team to get us out of here. I knew I would never forget that trip in my life. The excitement from a potential helicopter ride or chance to be on the news, and even more than that, the fear that we would never get out of the mountains, or be found by the bear before we could get back is what kept me going on that trail. Is what made me remember my trip to the Snowy White Mountains.

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808 Eagle Point Road, Peach Springs, AZ 86434

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Photo taken by Thomson Mallayil (father)

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It made me think about that time we went to the Grand Canyon in 2018. Everywhere you looked, there were layers and layers of rock. They never looked the same. All different shades of deep red, orange, brown, and some white. In some of the walls of the canyon you could even see little cuts inside of the rocks, shaped like elongated half circles, almost like windows. I remember asking my brother what they were, as he looked at one of those tourist signs they had every 100 feet, like he did for all of them. To this day, that practice is yet to leave him. And to this day, I still don’t know what those holes are. But, sometimes I like to believe what I thought they were when I first saw them. They looked so much like windows, all the same shape and size that I couldn’t help imagining the natives, who used to stay in the area, living in those little huts in the canyon. Sure, it may not have been the smartest thought now that I look back, but the incredible possibility was exhilarating. I imagined them climbing up the rocks, back and forth, drinking and getting water from the Colorado river at the very bottom. Climbing up to the top in places where it was barely imaginable to do so.

The stream looked so small from where I stood, just a tiny sliver of water that passed through the canyon. By looking at it, it only made my brain attempt to compute how high we actually were. Clearly high enough to think a 200 foot wide river was so small. As I gazed over to the other side of the canyon, I saw how it folded into itself and sometimes squiggled back and forth too. Then, I noticed a couple to my right. They were asking my dad to take a picture for them, as they stood at the very tip of the cliff we were on. Not only were they on the tip, they had their backs toward it. I was so scared for them, I was about to go and pull them forward so they wouldn’t fall. Yet, that only made me want to go deeper in too, to see what they could see. To step into the danger and experience the rush of adrenaline they felt. But, I didn’t quite trust my balance for that yet, and I bet my mom didn’t either. However, when my dad announced that he got tickets for the skywalk, I couldn’t pass down the opportunity to feel something close to what they felt.

After buying the tickets, we immediately got in line. The stairway up to the skywalk was packed, and we had to wait in line all the way there. But, when the line finally got to us, I almost wanted to let the people behind us go first. Still, my excitement got the best of me and marched me up to the skywalk. It was amazing, at first I was hesitant to let my foot even go near the middle of the glass tiles as I hugged the railings. But, when we went a few more steps I was right in the middle, peering down at the Canyon below me. Sure, I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility that the people who made this could have gotten lazy halfway, and decided that it wasn’t necessary to screw in all the screws, but I was so alive I could only barely think of those things.

I loved that Grand Canyon trip, and still cherish it today hoping to visit it again. That feeling of awe and the panic from thinking I was going to fall made that skywalk one of the most memorable moments of my life. The moment will never be forgotten merely because of the joy and warning it made me feel at once, all while doing something so unlike I had ever done before.

However, my mother on the other hand? I don’t think she liked it as much. There wasn’t a moment where she released her grip on the railing or even took a glance down at the canyon, until maybe right before we got off. Which, of course, may have made it even more memorable than just the fear or excitement did. These were the emotions that made up the memory in my head; the emotions of laughter joy, and terror all at once.

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Again reminding me of one of the most exciting trips I ever had. I was 6 that year, when we were driving towards the red rocks in Arizona. It had been an amazing trip so far and we had only been there for 2 days. But, those two days were enough for me to get tired of road trips that took longer than the time we actually spent at our destinations. My brother and I had gone through at least 20 games from the road trip I brought. My brother got it from our annual church VBS, and it had never come in handy until today. But, once and a while, when my family would get into conversations that I got bored with, like the latest news article my dad read the other night, I wasn’t exactly entertained. And sleeping every time I got bored wasn’t even possible at this point! I had done it so much, I was getting bored of sleeping!

I gazed out the window while they drifted into another conversation about something in space. Maybe that one was interesting, but I was already tuned out. I used to love to close my eyes and put my face up close to the window. Every time we went on a car ride on a sunny day, I would do it. Playing with the different shades of red that I would see depending on the amount of sunlight I gave them, rather than the black I normally saw when I closed my eyes.

“Mom, is there food?” my brother asked. That got me. I shot up and said, “Me too! I want food too!”.

“Yeah it’s in the cooler of the trunk, take a fruit, you just had chips,” my mom said. Great, no snacks…Oh well, guess a pear will do.

As I reached for the pear in the cooler, in the back row of our Honda pilot, I got yanked back. I looked down where I was getting pulled from, thinking I must have just moved too quickly for the belt but I was wrong. There was a knot in the belt, and not only was there a knot, it was somehow wrapped around my back too. That’s weird, I don’t remember doing this…

“Mom! I’m stuck!”, I cried out. Everyone in the car looked back at me,

“What happened?” my dad asked immediately. Umm… that’s going to be a tough one to answer.

“I don’t know! The belt is stuck!  Can’t even unbuckle it!,” I replied. My brother kept pulling it and trying to get me unstuck, but I could only feel it getting tighter. It wasn’t stopping pressing against me, to the point where I was having a hard time breathing.

I remember my dad pulling the car over. My mom told my brother to not tug it too hard or it will get tighter. Everyone got out of the car and tried to get me out while I tried to hold my fingers between my body and the belt which was beginning to pierce my skin. I wanted to cry so bad while my dad tried to undo this mess. I couldn’t tell if it was all the sudden attention and everyone asking if I was okay that made my eyes sting, or the deepening pain from the belt. Either way, I was holding back tears for one of the reasons, and I was pretty sure it was the latter.

My dad decided that calling the police was the only way to do this since he couldn’t find any object sharp enough to cut the belt either. Considering this was a rental car, I was pretty sure that I was going to make this trip memorable for my dad. As we waited for the police, all I could think of was how we might not be able to make it to the Red Rocks because of me. Was I going to ruin this whole day?

Once the police arrived, I was so thankful I wanted to hug him. He cut it off gently, and even joked around with me while he was doing it, trying to make me laugh. When I finally got out of the seat belt, and the police drove away, I laughed so hard with my family that I almost cried! I don’t think I ruined that trip anymore. I think I made it even better. I wasn’t going to remember the red rocks either way! Especially not since we had seen the Grand Canyon so recently! But now I do. Now I remember the amazing roads and views we saw on the road trip. All because of that particular incident I had just before the adventure.