Panic: any behavior that is sudden, extreme, and results from fear.
(Cambridge Dictionaries Online)
Thankfully, I haven't had many reasons to panic in my life. I'm sure my friends and family would attest that I've acted irrationally quite often, but not usually in a panic. One time, however, stands out in my mind.
Thirteen years ago. I know this quite certainly because I was six months pregnant with Rowan at the time. Thane and I had traveled to the Baja peninsula with our friends Tom and Mandy for a couple of weeks of driving around and playing. A week or so into our trip, we were on the Pacific Ocean side of the peninsula, at a beach a few miles south of Todos Santos. It was the first time I'd ever had the opportunity to really play in the surf, and I was loving it. Thane and I were bobbing in the waves, letting the surf push us around, and laughing our heads off.
After a while, at least 20 minutes or so, Thane said, "We'd better start heading back in." I looked around to see why, and saw that we were way further offshore than I'd realized, almost beyond the walls surrounding the little bay. Just as we started moving toward shore, a wave rolled in behind us and broke over our heads. "Hurry!"
I tried, really I did. But I just couldn't seem to make any forward motion. Every time I felt a modicum of control, another wave broke over us, then another and another. In all, a series of at least ten big waves did their darnedest to wash us out to sea. Eventually, I was able to just touch bottom with the tips of my toes, and finally found the strength to move forward. We made it back to shore, gasping and out of breath, my pregnant body exhausted.
This incident is one I'm not likely to ever forget. It was brought to mind today by a minor mishap while I was out snowshoeing. At the end of our street is a trail that cuts through the woods and connects to a larger trail system. To access it, I have to go through the snow storage lot at the end of our cul de sac. (Yes, Valdez gets enough snow to have entire lots dedicated to storing the snow the plows move. We have three storage lots on our 1/4-mile stretch of street.) Unfortunately, our neighborhood plow driver refuses to pile snow in such a manner that we can easily access the trail during the winter. In order to snowshoe today, I had to go around the small mountain of snow piled up at the back of the lot.
I decided to go around to the left where it looked like I might have an easier time skirting the pile. I was almost to the trail when my left foot and then my right plunged down thigh deep. I'd stepped on the trunk of a small white spruce tree, slipped off it, and had gone down into the surrounding brush. I could pull my right snowshoe out, but my left one was trapped, my leg pressed hard against the tree trunk. As I tugged on my foot to no avail, covered in snow from my head down, I felt my heart beating hard and my breathing get ragged. I forced myself to stop, take a deep breath, wipe the snow off my face, and start digging my leg out. Eventually, I lifted enough chunks of ice and snow out of the way that I was able to wrench my snowshoe out and pull myself upright. Not before, however, cursing myself for choosing to not bring my cell phone this one time.
This second episode was in no way as life-threatening as the first. I was within shouting distance of two houses, and wasn't likely to become hypothermic before I could get help. What I was surprised to realize, however, was that once again I had let initial panic quickly push me to the point of thinking "I can't do this." Today, it was a short-lived thought, and I knew my situation wasn't really that big of a deal. In Mexico, however, I reached the same conclusion, and if Thane hadn't been with me, I don't know that I would have made it.
More than the situations themselves, it's reaching that point of "I can't" that scared, and scares, me most of all. So far, I've been able to be level-headed enough to push back the initial panic and get myself out of trouble. I worry about next time.
