SITE OR SIGHT | SANDI’S OCTOBER PROMPT

Snow Capped Mountains

October Six Word Photo Story Challenge: “Site or Sight”

The photo took courage to snap.

A couple of years ago, I accompanied my middle school students on a ski trip as Dean of Students. The kids were excited. I was shaking in my snow boots. “Why?” I hear you ask.

The answer is simple. I fear ski lifts and heights. The two might be related. Oh, and I can’t ski. My tasks were pastoral in nature. I dispensed plasters for scrapes and blisters and treated the tired kiddos to hot chocolate.

On our first morning, we were waiting to take a ski lift up to the ski slopes. An empty ski lift approached. The doors opened. My legs failed. I couldn’t move them because of panic and fear — frozen like an ice statue.

The kids waited patiently. Curious faces stared at me. “Sir, you go first,” the choir of kids offered. My legs melted like ice cream on a hot summer day.

I stepped into the lift on shaky legs and glued my backside into a corner seat. The kids followed. “This is going to be fun, sir,” they all exclaimed.

More like hell was my silent retort. “Sure, tons of fun. Let’s go!” I replied, praying silently. The ski lift jerked away. I nearly fainted.

Swaying, we advanced upwards. The lift stopped suddenly. We swung about violently from side to side. My shriek pierced the air and bounced off the glass sides. “You, ok, sir?” someone asked.

“Yeah,” I lied, rubbing the back of my head. “I bumped my head.”

“Can you take a photo of me with the mountains in the background please, sir?” I summed up the courage to take the kid’s photo. Needless to say, I became the swinging ski lift photographer in the sky.

Eventually, we arrived, and I stepped out of the ski lift onto powdery soft crunching snow with cyan-blue mountains as a backdrop.

I looked up, and the amazing sight that greeted me made me realize I was in paradise. A winter wonderland paradise. The journey was worth it.

It is a site I would like to visit again in the near future to see that amazing scene.

Thank you, Sandi Parsons, for this interesting October prompt, and Mary Chang Story Writer, for creating this publication.