Just hanging around, upside down. Stone Mountain when it rains.

Just hanging around, upside down. Stone Mountain when it rains.

“I can’t believe you took them up there.”

That was my husband this morning.

Yesterday was my birthday. I try to celebrate outdoors with family in the elements.

Earlier in the day, my trainer gave me a treat and let me hang. I can think so much clearer with all that blood rushing to my brain.

After my hanging and having to catch up on a little work, I told the children that we would go play in the afternoon.

About 2 p.m my daughter came in and said, “Let’s climb Stone Mountain.”

Those of you not familiar with Stone Mountain, it’s an enormous chunk of granite.

One side has a navigable incline so novice mountain climbers like me and small children can navigate. It’s a mile to the top.

I’ve done it lots.

But never in the rain.

 This is my children at the base of the trek.

No more photos exist of our climb because I took my phone and camera to wait in the dry car.

The smartest decision I made all day.

Heading up it became evident that smooth granite when wet is slippery.

Very slippery.

About halfway up it started pouring.

The water cascading down the rocks made hundreds of streams and produced a million waterfalls.

I appreciated its beauty when I wasn’t worrying about falling down. Which wasn’t often.

We sought refuge in a shelter with lots of other wet hikers.

After wringing out our clothes that storm passed.  My children wanted to press on to the top.

So up we went. And the rain came again. This time with lightning.

On the steepest part of the climb in the pouring rain surrounded by flashes of electricity, we pulled ourselves up a slick granite sheet of death.

Image credit Tarra’s Travels

My brave son looked back down the rock of doom and said, “Mommy, I want to go down. I’m scared.”

This is also when I saw the headline INSANE MOM drags children up here on Friday the 13th to be struck by lightning and killed on her birthday.

But what I said was,

Joe, you can’t be scared now. We are almost to the top (and a large building). We’ve got to keep going.

We made it of course…since I am writing this 24 hours later.

How do we walk that fine line between thinking things will be okay and heading up the slick mountain or turning around the pessimist and never trying at all?

You would think by this age, I’d have it figured out.

I need to go hang myself again.