One summer, I was back east visiting my family. We had a cabin in Millinocket, Maine, right on the lake. It was pretty nice. My stepfather was from Millinocket and every now and then he would take a little vacation up there and whoever in the family was around could come and go as they pleased.
That year, I was around, and my two stepbrothers, Alex and Matthew, attended, along with my sister Breena, and, of course, Mom was there, too.
Like usual, we were all going to go climb Mount Katahdin, which was a pretty big mountain, and not at all just a walk in the park for me. I’m not a great mountain climber, or really all that into it, but I figured I’d go along for no good reason.
My whole philosophy about my personal health has always been this: as long as I looked good, it didn’t matter how healthy I was. Basically, I worked out enough to look good and I didn’t care how good my cardio was, or if I could stretch much, or all the other things actual health required.
This philosophy had a few holes in it, like when it came time to go hiking on mountains with my stepbrothers who were in much better physical condition than me, even though I may have looked better.
So, we all headed off for Mount Katahdin, which, I might add, is a pretty serious mountain to climb. It’s a big-ass mountain, 5,200 feet to be exact, and it’s also where the Appalachian Trail begins going all the way down to Springer Mountain in Georgia.
There’s a part to it called the Knife’s Edge, which is about a half-a-mile long in between two peaks. It’s called the Knife’s Edge because from about ten miles away it looks like a jagged, nasty knife. Up close it looks like an impassible obstacle course with 30-foot boulders and crazy rocks all over the place and a 3,000-foot drop on both sides with no easy way across it.

You had to be a real mountain climber to get through the Knife’s Edge. Not to mention that I’m scared of heights, and I mean SCARED of heights.
There wasn’t a little trail to casually walk along with a little rope protecting people from plummeting to their deaths. There was nothin’. Just a bunch of nasty, big boulders, and you had to improvise every step carefully in order to figure out a way OVER them, or basically fall to your death. That was it.
My two stepbrothers were like mountain goats, hopping from one boulder to the next, laughing and having fun. I was in a petrified, frozen trance of uncomfortable feelings, ranging from sheer terror to remorse to hatred towards them for tricking me, once again, to come “hiking” with them.
This wasn’t hiking. This was ROCK CLIMBING, with no ropes or equipment, and there was no easy way down once you were up. I was stuck up there in that God Forbidden Hell Hole called the Knife’s Edge.
My one stepbrother, Matthew, whom I feel the closest to, sort of could tell I was not doing too well. He was a yoga and meditation teacher, so he was semi-aware of his surroundings, which included me clutching to a boulder, white in the face and panting in sheer terror.
I was feeling my pulse to see how high it was.
You know that little chart on the treadmill at the gym that shows the different age groups and the beats-per-minute pulse you should have for a good cardio work out? Well, for my age bracket, the range is around 110 to 150.
You must understand that I’m clinging to a rock, a few thousand feet up, with no safety equipment, truly scared to death of falling, for real, and to make matters worse, my heart is beating 30 beats per minute faster than the maximum allowed at the gym for a vigorous cardio workout.
I wasn’t having a cardio workout. I was scared out of my mind and panicking.
My stepbrother Matt, the mindful one, somehow noticed that I wasn’t doing too well and came over to me and asked if I was okay.
I looked at him and said, “Do I look okay to you, man? I’m dying here and I’m going to fall to my death and there’s no way out. Put that in your meditation pipe and smoke it.”
He tried to console me and said that he’d slow down the pace so that I might survive. The operative word was MIGHT.

While this little moment was happening, Alex sprang over, jumping like a mountain goat, not winded at all, and he was laughing. He saw me suffering, and instead of trying to help, he started throwing little rocks at me.
He just crossed the line with me, man. I was going to get him. I didn’t know how, or where, or when, but I was going to get him.
You GUNKY, I thought.
In fact, the will to get Alex back gave me the strength to forge ahead. I mean, if I were to give up now and fall to my death, then there would be no sweet reward for me of getting him back somehow.
So, I found the inner strength to keep moving and I found that warrior energy spirit guide inside me, giving me the power to face my fear of dying and my fear of heights.
Those are fancy words for saying what probably really happened, which was my adrenalin from panicking kicked in, and only my will to survive, my natural instincts, allowed me to live.
Either way, I got the hell over the Knife’s Edge and made it to safety. All I could think of was how and when and where I was going to get Alex back for throwing rocks at me when I was freaking out and clinging to a 3,000-foot ledge.
When we got back to the cabin, we all told our versions of our little mountain climbing expedition — kind of like when early man must’ve told stories about the hunt when they came back to their respective caves. Each of us described how it went down, and when it came to me I pretty much told it like it was — that I almost died and that it was a horrible experience.
In my family, people tended to exaggerate in order to add EFFECT to their story, because quite often you’d get ignored or swept under the rug unless you could come up with a pretty convincing argument.
No one felt sorry for me because the age range of people that could cross the Knife’s Edge was 11 and up. An untrained 6th grader could easily hike across the Knife’s Edge, but I almost died of fear.

One time, when I was six, I was on my bicycle, trying to keep up with the big kids and they all went over a big, steep, scary hill in the back of the high school where there was sand and loose gravel at the bottom.
Of course, when I went down that thing I hit the sand and gravel and went flying and completely tore up my body in every way imaginable. I had bloody knees, elbows, hands, forehead, and other parts of my body bleeding, too. People to this day still can’t figure out how I had managed to bloody so much of myself. I somehow dragged my broken body back home and my stepfather yelled at me to quit crying and take it like a man.
I was six and REALLY hurt bad.
It was his job to clean me up and fix my wounds. So, he took a really rough cloth that felt like SANDPAPER and he scrubbed my already ridiculously sensitive and hurting wounds and made them bleed more while I writhed in pain. Then, he poured on that red stuff called Mercurochrome that just made the pain worse. I almost passed out from an overload of pain and trauma.
In my house, a traumatic accident like this didn’t qualify for sympathy, empathy, or even nice treatment – not even for a second. In my house, if there wasn’t blood showing, then you weren’t allowed to be in pain. Even if there was blood showing, and in my case a LOT of blood was all over the place, I still got treated with no respect, like Rodney Dangerfield on his worst day ever.
Life isn’t fair, my step-dad would say.
Whatever man, we’ll talk about him later…
Back to my fun summer vacation. It was raining that night in Millinocket, Maine and we’d heard from the locals that it had been raining for two weeks and that the rivers and lakes were really high.
We were all planning on going whitewater rafting the next day, for the first time ever, I might add. My stepbrother, Alex, was expressing some concern that maybe we should wait a few days until the water went down a little before we attempted to battle a whitewater rafting situation with untrained, first timers, like me and Matthew.
“C’mon, man,” I yelled, “don’t be a pussy, it’ll be easy!”
He just shook his head in true fear for his life, because I guess he had some issues with raging waters, whereas I didn’t care at all.
I was afraid of heights, not widths.
And, I was hoping God was going to help me, after all, and get Alex back for throwing rocks at me while I was panicking to death. This thought made a lot of sense to me and I felt really good, wallowing in my joy, knowing that he might be scared of something and bumming out about it.
For some reason, and I don’t why, it seems we humans get pleasure out of other people’s pain. I guess that’s why there will always be wars and stuff, because someone is having a lot of fun from others’ misfortunes and what not.
When we got to the river the next morning, we noticed that the water looked REALLY high. Alex didn’t look too good.
I said, “It looks fine, it’s only water.”
So, we got to the river rafting place and we signed up for a day of rafting. We got our helmets and our little life preservers on and were just about all set.
Then, we all jumped in a big van and headed on up to the top of the river where everyone starts. No big deal, just another day goin’ raftin’.
When we arrived at the area where all the rafts were, we find out that the damn upstream was hit by lightning the night before, so it wasn’t operable, which meant the water, which was already high, was out of control and what was once a Class 3 rapid was now a Class 5 rapid. Plus, all the rain from the past two weeks meant that the water was about as high as naturally possible and we were sure to get our money’s worth on this river rafting expedition.
We all jumped in the little raft and met our guide. She gave us about a five-minute tutorial on how to paddle and how to lean and all the commands like, stroke faster or backstroke to turn – you know, rafting stuff.
After about five minutes of practicing, it was time to go for it. I was all excited and raring to go. Alex was looking really worried and acting all paranoid, like something bad might happen.
I was like, what could happen?
Our rafting guide asked all of us if we had ever been rafting before. We all said no. There were eight of us, plus the rafting guide in the back.
Me and Matt were in the front; we were the steering guys and point men. Alex was next to Matt and then some couple from New York and a few other randoms and that’s who was in our little boat. The rafting guide looked a little nervous and said that the water was a little faster than normal and that we all needed to cooperate and do everything she said. I wasn’t scared at all. I was wearing a helmet and a life preserver. It was just a little bit of water. How dangerous could it be?
Off we went!!!!
Hmmmmm…I thought to myself, maybe this will be a teeny weeny bit scary, but probably not that big of a deal.
We were all paddling and heading into the fast part.
Stroke, stroke stroke, she yelled at us, and then she started telling us all these complicated instructions about forward, then backward and to lean and to go faster and lean. I had no idea what she was saying. No one could really hear her with the roar of the water.
We went over an 11-foot drop…wheeeee….that was fun! That wasn’t scary at all. Alex’s face was all serious and he looked like he was gonna puke. I was having a blast. Me and Matt were laughing and were all exhilarated.
Then, we really started flying down the river and we were paddling and going sideways and the guide was yelling at us to paddle harder and for me to go backward and for my whole side to start leaning and all this stuff. We were flying along and right up ahead was a giant 15-foot drop and jagged rocks all over the place that could easily puncture the boat and kill us all.
Hey, wait a sec.

This was TOTALLY dangerous.
The guide was saying that no matter what –do NOT get out of the boat, and that if somehow we flipped, to hang on to the boat.
I was not gonna let go of this stupid boat, no matter what. I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle of Class 5 rapids, getting smashed into jagged rocks everywhere.
So, we went right over the 15-foot drop, but the problem was, no one was paddling the right way and our guide was screaming at us to go forwards, and then to go backwards, and to lean and to steer and to LOOK OUT FOR THE ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We went sideways over a giant water fall and smashed into a huge, jagged, mean, scary, rock.
We all screamed, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!”
We landed, and got stuck in a backward whirlpool, which sucked the entire boat underwater.
I couldn’t even see the boat; all I saw was whitewater foam pouring on our heads. The boat was completely submerged, and stuck sideways in a whirlpool at the bottom of a huge underwater cliff with millions of cold, angry gallons of water pouring on us.
I figured we would just be stuck for a few seconds and then be on our merry, wet, way. My brother Alex’s face was completely white and he looked like a ghost, and he was so scared that he couldn’t move. I was laughing and pointing, goofing around with my brother Matt. What was the big deal? We were just pinned on a huge rock in the middle of a whirlpool, being sucked under by the massive force of a Class 5 rapid pouring on us like thunder.
The little rafting guide girl who probably was in a lot of trouble was screaming at us to push off the rock and to paddle backward and all this other stuff we couldn’t understand. We weren’t going anywhere. We were totally pinned. The boat wasn’t even visible and we were sideways in the middle of a Class 5 rapid, stuck and bent around a giant, mean, jagged rock. We were stuck, man, and not goin’ anyplace soon.
After about five minutes, we all realized that we were REALLY stuck. This wasn’t going to just go away. There were millions of pounds of force on each side of us, bending our little boat around a giant rock that was EXACTLY in the middle of the side of our boat. This situation probably was one in a million, and if we had just hit the rock slightly to the side, even an INCH, then we wouldn’t be stuck. But we must’ve hit precisely the exact molecule right in the middle of the boat for us to be pinned like that. Oh, well, I guess we were just stuck, man.
I yelled over to Alex, who was only about four feet away, but the noise was so loud that the only way to communicate was to scream.
I said to him, “Hey, Al, you see that rock right over there? It’s got your name on it, man; that’s where your face is gonna be as soon as we get off this stupid boulder.”
He just looked at me like a deer caught in headlights, like a mouse in a cat’s mouth after it’s given up squirming. He had lost his will to live and he was petrified to the point of not even being able to move or yell or do anything. He couldn’t run away, he couldn’t do shit, man. He was stuck with me, and I was laughing and singing and saying stuff like, “Look, no hands!” and I waved my hands in the air to show off that I was not falling out of the boat and that I was not scared and that I was having the time of my life.
About ten more minutes went by and we were super stuck, man; we were not getting out of this one on our own at all. Up on the bank on the side of the river, a team of about 10 guys showed up and threw us a big giant rope. We grabbed it and they tried to pull us out of the little whirlpool that was keeping us stuck in this waterfall situation. They couldn’t pull us out; there was just too much water pouring on us, sucking us under a huge waterfall of thunderous, pounding water, gushing on our heads at all times.
About another ten minutes goes by and another team of guys showed up on the other side of the river. They threw us a rope and now we had two teams of guys trying to pull different parts of the boat around the giant stupid rock that we were pinned on.
Nothing.
We weren’t going anywhere, man. After about five minutes of this, we finally got nudged off the giant rock and immediately started sprinting down the super-fast rapids.
I’m not joking when I say this was a super-fast river and there were nasty, mean, jagged rocks in all directions waiting for us to crash into them and die, right there on the spot. This was no family white water rapids for amateurs; this was a death trap, and only very experienced, professional white water rapids guys should have been allowed to be on that hellhole of a God forbidden river!
While the guys had been trying to pull us out, all kinds of other people gathered by the riverbank, pointing and laughing and taking pictures and using their video cameras. I guess it was pretty fun for all the landlubbers up there, watching us being pinned at the bottom of a huge waterfall.
Somehow, we managed to get our little boat to the side of the river and pulled up next to the bank, out of harm’s way. Our little rafting guide chick asked if anyone wanted to get out and take the bus downstream and meet us at the BBQ area where we all were gonna have a fun little dinner.
My brother Alex sprang out of the boat and said he would meet us downstream. No one else jumped out of the boat. Not the couple from New York, not the teenage kids, not me, not Matt. Just Alex.
“Okay, bye,” we said, and headed on out for the rest of the rapids.
I thought to myself how only 24 hours ago I was stuck on a super dangerous, scary, mountain ridge called the Knife’s Edge and how my fear of heights was kicking my ass and there was no way to get down except to keep going forward. And how my mean brother Alex was throwing rocks at me while I was clinging to the edge of the cliff, afraid to move and feeling like dying.
How perfect this day was that we would get stuck in the middle of a Class 5 rapid and how Alex couldn’t get away fast enough and was afraid of the water and of dying when really it wasn’t all that dangerous, certainly not as dangerous as the rock-climbing that we had done the day before. I felt like there was justice in the Universe and that this was nature’s way of getting him back. It was instant Karma, man.
We kept on cruising down the river and had a blast flying over giant drops and bouncing into huge rocks and not getting pinned again. It wasn’t really all that dangerous and it was super fun. After a very short while, we were all experts at paddling and going forward and backward, and we learned how to steer the boat really well so by the time we got to the bottom we had it down, man.
In fact, right in front of the people at the BBQ area downstream there was one last rapid and a special rock that had a backward undertow thing happening.
Our guide told us that if we hit the rapid a certain way that we could surf on the backward undertow area and actually go backward for a little bit and then get caught, intentionally, in a fun little game thing where we could control the boat going forward and backward and show off to the people in the BBQ area, who were all watching us.
I was waving to my brother Alex, who was sulking and slinking around, all scared and embarrassed and angry. Well, it served him right for throwing rocks at me when I was in a life-and-death situation.
Another cool thing that happened at the end of the day was when we returned our helmets and paddles and life jackets back at the boathouse. They had a big video projector, showing all the footage and highlights of the day.
It turned out they had a bunch of video camera people up on shore, taking videos of all the boats and people flying around on the river. Since our boat had such a dramatic thing goin’ on, we had all kinds of video of us from several sources and we got to replay the whole thing, over and over, in front of my parents and all the other people’s families — how we got stuck and the whole rescue with the ropes and the whole thing. It was glorious to keep the magic going on and on…
I love Class 5 rapids.