Henry Eckels

After I zipped on my wetsuit, which was so tight around my body that I could barely
move my arms above my shoulders, we stepped into the white van and traveled a short distance
to the top of the canyon. When the car stopped, I wondered how exactly we were supposed to
get down to the bottom of the canyon, but one of our canyon guides answered that question
before it left my thoughts. Were going to rappel down this 50 meter cliff. My heart sank (I
have a dreadful fear of heights). Nevertheless I was voluntarily third in line to make the descent
into the belly of the beast, if only so that I could get it done with as soon as possible.
I made the mistake of taking a glance downwards as my guides hooked me up to the
railing by a single support rope. They told me that after I take the first step I should just walk
backwards. After I relearned how to walk (the fear made me forget for a short time) descending
was actually easy. When I was about halfway down, I decided to take a breather and actually
look around myself. The mountains were incredible- the blacks and whites and browns of the
surrounding mountains were so vivid as though they were the colors of a painting; their
foundations were grass fields of the softest green, polka dotted with yellow flowers to make a
very oddly colored pair of underwear; the canvas was a completely cloudless sky of the starkest
blue.
Sometimes beauty is terrifying, and anyone who has done adventure sports in the Swiss
Alps will testify to this fact. I am a journalism student from Baylor University studying abroad
here in Italy and I chose to visit Switzerland for one of my free weekends. Switzerland is a
remarkable place; it is a landlocked country surrounded and filled by the Alps Mountains. The
only truly habitable places are in the countless valleys that dot the country.

I decided to go canyoning while exploring the worlds most famously politically neutral
country. Canyoning is an extreme sport that is only possible in a few countries in the world. It
involves maneuvering through the bottom of a ravine in a canyon by treading through shallow
rapids, sliding down natural waterslides, jumping down waterfalls into cold pools of water and
zip lining across otherwise unpassable terrain. Facing this once in a lifetime opportunity, I felt I
had no choice but to seize it. However, I had no idea just how terrifying-or fun- the adventure
would be.
Our guides showed us the proper way of maneuvering through the canyon river, and
often the proper way involved utilizing unconventional paths. For lack of better footholds
throughout the course, we found ourselves balancing our feet on the edges of rocks and sliding
down slippery rocks into pools of white water. Just one misstep is all it would take to twist or
break an ankle. Most of the stepping stones were subject to constant water spray, prime for moss
and algae growth which made them extra slippery- the very much resembled shiny, green blades.
We avoided going underwater as often as possible, as the freezing water would
occasionally flow into our supposedly water-tight wetsuits through the neck sleeve and chill the
rest of the body. We often had to squat down and use our hands to move through the obstacles.
Other times the obstacles were impassable enough that the guides had to grab our ankles and
swing us across a slippery boulder into a shallow pool of water in order to get across safely.
All the way through the canyon, you could see the gorgeous mountains overlooking the
cliffs around us. Yet there was inherent danger in all of it; the ravine waters, which glistened
like shimmering gemstones over the smooth rocks, were so rapid in places that they could push
you down a waterfall to a watery grave; the cliff sides, which have been so elegantly carved by

thousands of years of water erosion, formed giant boulders, which, upon even the slightest
suggestion, might have rolled down and crushed us.
Our canyon guides escorted us to the top of a small boulder that was jutting out of the
cliff side where we were to jump form. I looked down some 30 feet below me and picked out
the exact location I wanted to make landfall. Both my mind and my body were telling me not to
jump. I rejected their thoughts and jumped anyways. Every jump we made, if done incorrectly,
would have resulted in two broken legs.
Yet the enjoyment ironically comes from having survived all these intricate trials, and the
experience of overcoming them. The beauty too was only fully appreciable due to the constant
threat of horribly twisting an ankle or falling into a pool embedded with jagged, dagger like
rocks.
My adventure through the canyon was treacherous until the very end, with the final leg of
the journey involving bracing our backs against dry rock and our feet against very slippery
rocks- if our feet slipped, it would mean falling down into a very narrow ditch that would be
extremely hard to escape. Yet, as soon as it was done, I experienced a rush of euphoria. We
were back on that soft green grass, in the shadows of those snow-tipped mountains. Switzerland
is the ultimate mixture of beauty and danger, a perfect storm of natural art and accidental death.
Perhaps that combination, though, is what makes the Swiss Alps so seductive to the human eye;
in order for us to experience specimens of such beauty, we must accept the perils that come with
being in their vicinity. Just as each painting has its whites and its blacks, so too does Switzerland
have its rewards and its risks.