Healing Doses of Danger

Ladislav Ph.D Sedlak

Description

The text of this book does not fit any category. It's like listening to a storyteller around the campfire rather reading the book. The author does not use any common literary devices as gradation, dramatization or emotionalism. In spite of that, his book made such a strong impact on me that I still remember clearly every story.

-Egon Bondy

Sujets

• Adventurers
• Biography
• Autobiography
• Explorers

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456606688
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Healing Doses of Danger
 
by
Ladislav Sedlak
 


Copyright 2011 Ladislav Sedlak,
All rights reserved.
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0668-8
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 

 
 
 
Healing Doses of Danger
 

Priorities are changing - but not in my life because my priority is life itself. First, I felt it just instinctively. Now it is a deeply entrenched philosophy.
When I was in my late thirties, I liberated myself from my ambitions and started to live. I wanted to qualify for tombstone inscription- Consumed by Life and not Died at Seventy, Lived Two Years.
In spite of my shameful laziness, the harder I played the happier I was. That force accelerated me beyond the point of return. Most of my friends went in the opposite direction. They married and concentrated on their careers. They dropped abruptly the pursuit of madness with me, and started a normal life. I continued on my uncertain path, leaning heavily on my controversial beliefs, for example: few things jeopardize adventurous life of the man as much as good work and good woman. Fortunately, most of my work was boring repetition not worth to keep. The good women left me for the same reason I attracted them -free spirit. I think very fondly about them for many reasons but mostly because they sensed correctly I cannot be domesticated and spared me from painful failure as a husband.
Living by myself offered me unrestricted social life and solitude I needed for reading, practicing my musical instruments and doing absolutely nothing. Responsible just for myself I could act pretty irresponsibly, mainly concerning my finances. I never knew how to make good fast money but I had that deep satisfied feeling I will never learn that and that conviction effectively protected me from money making schemes, which would disturb my peace and would suck me into the world I wasn’t fit for. I did not save any money – luckilyy, because I didn‘t know that one dollar spent in youth is worth hundred dollars spent later.
I would not exchange my sweet years of gypsy living for anything else. The value of the years when I had nothing (except good life) is increasing every day. If this will continue, I will be filthy rich in no time.
Talented artists make beautiful things from words, sounds, wood and clay or just about anything they touch. I tried to make something beautiful out of my life and share it with anybody who cares.
 
A warm summer night I am just falling asleep. Suddenly I hear a familiar knocking on my window and whisper: “Night ride”. My parents are sleeping in the next room so I move silently, slipping out, getting my motorcycle and pushing it through the yard. Finally, on the street, I am still half-dazed, kick starting my bike and cursing my friend Dino. It has no effect on him at all; he knows I love these rides. In a few minutes, our bikes begin to whine up the winding road toward the mountains. Smells of wheat, alfalfa and freshly plowed fields, assault me in rapid succession. I perceive these fragrances so intensely I am getting high. We stop at little knoll and cut the engines. For moment, we are afraid to break the magic silence. Stars and city lights almost touching on the horizon just a few miles from us, but I feel like I am light years away.
The next day I worked on my spare engine because the bike was quite old and having one engine ready kept me mobile all the time. The evening was unusually warm, which always made me restless. Riding through downtown, I saw a girl I knew, walking on the sidewalk. I had already given up on her several times because invariably something adverse happened when I met her or wanted to meet her, but her attraction prevailed. I stopped to talk to her. Her smile and short meaningful glance into my eyes effectively paralyzed my brain. I was aware I talked like an idiot but I couldn't do anything about that. I heard myself asking her to come with me right away to my cabin in the mountains. I couldn't believe she said yes. She went home to change with a promise that we would meet in one hour at the same spot. Everything was wonderful save one little detail: I had no cabin in the mountains. Half-dazed and pressed for time, I made some phone calls. Dino was at home and said I could have a key for his family's cabin. Toward the end of the conversation, he mentioned that he would join us with his girlfriend.
In one hour, she was back. I explained to her she must sit close and hold me tight because that's the only way to ride a bike. She did better than I instructed and when we reached the cabin, I tried desperately to stay cool, not to show her how much I wanted her. Dino went to unlock the door and, when he came back, my world collapsed. He had broken the key in the lock. We took the girls home. They shared a room so we parted in front of their building. Dino said see you later, I said goodbye. We both kept our word.
The mountains always cured my ailments. This disappointment with pretty blonde needed some curing, so I decided to go to the most beautiful mountain range in Slovakia-Vysoke Tatry. Planning the trip made me feel better already. I picked deep valley with tarns, solid granite walls and spires. As usual, Dino agreed to come.
To be prudent, we wanted to bring along an experienced climber. The best candidate was our mutual friend Oczi. He was one of our classmates in the technical school. In the beginning, it didn't look like we would ever become friends. He was four years older than everybody else was quiet, unassuming and he looked like a horse. He was like an island everybody saw from the shore, but nobody bothered to go there. One day, to the amazement of the whole class, he started to run between the desks jumping like a colt and making sounds just like the real horses do. I knew that right away he was my kind of man. After the seizure, I went to him. We talked and became friends.
It was up to me to visit him and talk him into this trip. His mother hated his mountain climbing just as passionately as he loved it. She thought her colt would never jump over the fence if we were not braying on the other side. In order to avoid her, I didn't approach the main entrance. Instead, I went to the little window of his basement room. Looking through it I saw this rugged, hairy man knitting. His huge hands hypnotized by his bulging eyes moved quickly under the lamplight. He said, he couldn't find knee socks to fit him, so out of two pairs of short socks, he was making long ones. He was slightly damaged from previous trips and short of money so he grudgingly declined our invitation. However, he lent us his rope and climbing guide.
Dino and I agreed to take just one bike so we were nicely loaded. We fastened one sleeping bag just below the headlight and another on the rack, which supported the backpack worn by the guy on back. Roaring through the villages, we yelled obscenities at the villagers and laughed hysterically assuming they couldn't hear us. (I found out later they could) I drove the bike so hard that the tachometer needle fell off from the vibrations. We couldn't get very high with our bike because Vysoke Tatry National Park is closed to motor vehicles. We parked, redistributed the gear to backpacks, and started to walk.
Tery's cabin is at an elevation of over 6000 feet and is high above the timberline. Among other reasons, I loved this place because it was located in the "Democracy elevation." Communism never got higher than 6000 feet. It was too strenuous and dangerous for informers and the rest of the scum to get so high. We could bitch about the government and freely discuss any topic. We savored every minute of it. However, the day we came, nobody talked politics. A bunch of rock-climbers from the prestigious Mountain Rescue Team was there. They were drinking, laughing, playing guitars and telling stories nobody could match. One was about a glider pilot who hit the mountainside. He survived the crash but had many broken bones, so they took him to one of the air tram stations, removed the door from the hinges, and lashed him tight. For some reason he ended up in the position of a crucified man. They placed him on the floor of the gondola departing for a foothill town. It never happened before but the cable snapped and the gondola plummeted to the ground. The rescue team found him again. He was almost in a vertical position with outstretched arms gazing calmly down at the disaster in front of him.
Before midnight, we left this lively bunch. Falling asleep, I still heard soft guitar sounds filling the place with the special atmosphere only cabins high in the mountains have. Morning came very fast. Staggering at some ungodly pre-dawn hour, we put our gear together, and after a few minutes of walking, I woke up and started to enjoy the life again. Suddenly, we broke through the fog into the sunshine. Only the highest ranges were protruding over the clouds. I realized why in most off religions the gods dwell in some high place. We stopped for a moment to enjoy this rare sight as we gnawed on hard sausage, pity the poor mortals down under the clouds.
From there it was not very far to Ram Pass where we started to climb. I cursed the damn climbing guide and Dino to the black hell because he disappeared somewhere behind the rocks to study the terrain in a nice sunny spot while I belayed from a cold windy place below. Finally, we started to move. The ridge was so jagged and narrow that sometimes we had to straddle it. Then we reached our destination: the highest of the Swallow Towers. My thrill was tainted by worries of how we would get down. I had never before been to such an exposed place. The