Artistic Liberties

I wrote the following account for a manuscript reading in my speech class. Some of it may be a bit exaggerated or even false, but for the most part this is what happened. If either of my "sick friends" have any concerns as to the accuracy of it, please let me know! I guess it's more misleading than inaccurate.

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My hands were red and completely frozen from bracing myself on the sharp rocks – definitely the strongest wind I had ever braved. As I struggled around the rim to the very topmost rock, I imagined my body as a hand stuck out the window of speeding car. This was very similar, I thought, my body leaning and falling against the powerful but inconsistent wind, rocks scraping and bruising me with every slip.

This was the adventure of a lifetime, and I was about to learn something that would change mine forever.

Just out of high school, I had flown to Amsterdam and boarded a medical ship en-route to West Africa to do development work. We had stopped for ten days on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Sixteen of my friends and I had rented cars and set off for a day-hike up the island’s 10,000 foot creator – El Tiede, the volcano. As we ascended, however, we realized the tropical coast hadn’t prepared us for the frigid alpine climb, and slowly the exhausted group shrank to five. The winds grew stronger and stronger, and in a short while, we would run out of daylight. Two of my friends started feeling sick, and we all came to the realization that we couldn’t make it to the top.

Dejected, we began our descent. I was, by far, the most disappointed, but I saw no way around it. The rest of our party was already waiting at the rental cars that were due the next morning. We had no warm clothes, no food, and no shelter. Fortunately, my sick friend was thinking, and he was far more creative than I; puking and exhausted, he hatched a plan that would give him some rest.

There was a bungalow part-way down the volcano; moments later, I found myself and my two sick friends begging the Spanish-speaking owner with hand signals to let us stay for the night. We weren’t sure how we would make the long trek down and the two-hour trip back to the ship the next day, but we jumped out onto the limb – my two sick friends, for rest; me – to overcome the odds and make it to the top.

And now I was on a volcano, above the clouds off the coast of Africa. I was hungry, cold, exhausted, and alone. The only food I had eaten was some soup broth and a wafer some Spanish boy scouts had given to us the night before. The clouds were blowing through and past me, mixing with the blinding phosphorus gas jetting from three or four vents in the crater. I pushed myself into a small enclave and attempted to take a picture with my frozen hands. This was it, I thought, “I’m the only one to make it.”

After a moment of silence, my thoughts returned to my cold body, my malfunctioning knee, and my empty stomach. Side-stepping back down the loose cinders, I focused on the sun now risen above the sea of clouds below me. In the next moment the whole journey became a metaphor for my life, and I began questioning God about whether he would be there for me if I took my life to places others feared. Should I live in defiance of the odds? Would God be there to take care of me?

As I stumbled down the mountain, conversing with the sky, I noticed a small piece of plastic hiding under a rock on the path before me. In a moment of appreciation for the beautiful surroundings, I decided to remove the litter and dispose of it properly, but as I approached and knelt to pick it up, I found it was more than just plastic.

Now, at this point, I had no idea how I could make it back to civilization. I was in a foreign country and they spoke a foreign language. I had no map to find my way back to the port and no way of knowing how to find a place to eat and sleep until I made it back. But there I was, alone, on the side of a volcano, holding in my hands a beautiful ham and cheese sandwich.

Would God provide for me? I pulled the sandwich out of the plastic bag and smelled it – it seemed ok. How had it got under the rock? One of the boy scouts could have left it, I guess. I really have no idea. But that sandwich was more than just food.

When I enjoyed it with my two now-rested and jovial friends a couple hours later, I reflected on the provision of shelter and food where before I had seen only a barren cinder cone.

The three of us spent the rest of the day hiking, hitch-hiking, and taking wrong buses until we made it back to our ship that night. No one really noticed we were missing, but we knew where we had been; that we had conquered and could do the impossible with a little faith, a little pain, and a lot of help from our creator. Have you braved any fierce and daunting volcanoes? He’ll be waiting there for you.