pride

lets just get one thing straight: i'm afraid of heights. as a child, every time i came too close to the edge somewhere my mom would snap with a retort, some terrifying example of a kid who got too close and whoops! now he's dead or paralyzed or all screwed up because he fell in or off or slipped or tripped. so it's not just that i'm simply afraid of heights; i'm mostly afraid of falling. and it's not just me i'm afraid for. i'm afraid for other people at heights too. you know, it's almost worse, watching someone else all up high, leaning over a railing, on top of a tipsy tall ladder, or balancing precariously here or there. i mean, truly, actually, i think it's way worse. so today, when our shed roof was nearing completion, with my little work crew consisting of james, allan and matthew climbing around up there like confident marsupials, conducting the surgery of surgeries, balancing like tightrope walkers over the crest of slick new red metal roofing, it was all i could do to stay busy. i was like frozen. like, i couldn't keep my eyes off of them. i couldn't cook them my usual camp cook meals, i struggled to cut the tar paper i was supposed to be cutting... all of my attempts to be productive were futile. i could barely go inside to stoke the fire and relieve myself. i just kept hollering the motherly "be careful", with a worried side of, "maybe you should tie up", meditating all the while on a successful, uninjured return to safer ground.

now, tonight, it's all over. by the seat of our pants and weeks from when we undertook the project of projects, all fear of heights aside, it's done: that monolithic rotten roof is repaired, and this old building is one step further from rotting into the earth. i'm so proud of my guys. you did it.