When I was eight, I had free roam of the hills and canyons that surrounded my house. In our town of 300 people, there really wasn’t anything a kid could do except scramble through rocks and throw spears made of sotol, build forts, and heedlessly cross railroad tracks unsupervised. I went out exploring with my brothers constantly. They fought; I tattled, they played; I imitated. Sometimes a friend would join me instead. The rural landscape was unforgiving but we didn’t know any better. We were unaware of any danger the world could hold and too bold to ever think something would happen to us. We were powerful. We were invincible. We were innocent.
Before my best friend, Katrina, moved back to her native Alaska, I was allowed to spend the night at her house. I don’t remember much about the sleepover except that I didn’t like the dinner her mom cooked and that her step-dad didn’t seem to get up from the chair in front of the television set.
I do remember one thing clearly though. After eating breakfast the next morning, my friend and I wanted to go exploring on their property. Without warning her step-dad told us, from his armchair, on no uncertain terms, to stay away from the edge of the sinkhole. Sinkhole?! My curiosity immediately perked up despite being a fairly obedient child who was known to punish herself for minor transgressions. With the trailer house’s door swinging shut behind us, we decided we would maybe, possibly, look at the sinkhole. Give it a casual glance and go on our way.
But what entices an eight year old to do something they’re not supposed to do? Tell them to not do it. Of course we meandered our way to that sinkhole. We reasoned to ourselves with child-like logic: it isn’t like we were actually going to go to the edge, we were only going to look at it. Maybe throw a couple rocks into it. That’s not what I did though.
I can clearly recall this huge hole in the limestone bedrock. From a distance, a person wouldn’t even see the sinkhole. It was unexpected. It looked as if someone had melted the ground away but missed the middle. There was a sort of rock “bridge” that spanned the middle of the pit. A circle divided in two. I don’t remember having the courage to walk the center line. Instead I sat down and scooted along on my bottom.
This is the oldest memory I have of doing something completely exhilarating. This is the oldest memory I have a choosing to put myself in a dangerous situation. Yes, there was that creek crossing a couple years earlier when I almost got swept away in the current. And yes, there was that time that my horse was spooked by a train and my boot slipped through the stirrup. But those things had happened to me. I didn’t have a choice. This is the oldest memory I have of me making a decision to do something not only disobedient, but perilous. Cutting off my Barbie’s hair was no comparison.
Sitting there, I could see the pebbles and broken off rocks that cascaded down the sides of the sinkhole. I could see the black pit at the bottom. I could see why my friend’s step-dad had told us not to go here.
As quickly as I had climbed my way to danger’s edge, I retreated. It was my first brush with the realization that I was doing something treacherous, deadly even, and while liberating, the sensation was too new, too strong for my brain to comprehend. The innocent belief that I was unconquerable dissipated into the Texas air.
I looked at Katrina, we nervously giggled, and ran back to the house. No one told on us, no one saw us. Our own fear chased us home.