Rejected Fear and a Golden Opportunity

I tried my best not to do it. I drove ten miles away from it, but pure love for my children turned me around. The neatest thing I did this summer almost didn't happen. I was just plain scared.

You see, I have claustrophobia. Not a terribly bad case, but I'm not thrilled to be confined in small places. So, you'll understand why I didn't want to go a thousand feet down a mine shaft to explore a gold mine.

We were in Colorado on vacation last month. We had already ascended Pike's Peak. That's another story. I'll write about it later, but the next day we drove around the mountain to Cripple Creek, an old mining town. As we were leaving, I pulled into the parking lot of the Molly Kathleen Brown Gold Mine. There is a gift shop there and a beautiful overlook of the town below, framed by white-capped mountains all around.

A big sign at the site announced that we could ride a real miner's cage a thousand feet straight down and tour a real, operating gold mine. We could even ride on a mine cart, like you see in the movies, when we got down there.

I've never seen my son want something as bad as he wanted to take that tour. My wife and daughter were mostly ambivalent about it, but David was dead set on going. I was dead set on not going.

It did look like a neat thing to do - something you could tell your friends about, but the thought of it terrified me. They said the tour took an hour. What if I got down there and panicked? How dark would it be? How low would the ceilings be? What if the whole thing caved in while we were down there?

David pleaded with me, but I refused. We loaded up and headed back around the mountain toward our motel in Manitou Springs. I was proud of David because he understood how I was feeling about it, but I knew he was disappointed.

Then it happened. My wife gave me the look. You know that look, the one that says "Maybe we should give it a try."

I drove on for another five miles or so, then pure love and determination made me turn around. You should have seen the look on my son's face.

And you should have seen the look on my face as I watched them load people like cattle into the double-decker steel cage, then drop them into that gopher hole. The guide said, "See the town down there? Well, it's only six hundred feet; we're going four hundred feet lower than that!" I could feel panic welling up in my being. I looked at my wife and said, "I don't think I can do this." I already had on my miner's hard hat and coat and walked up sheepishly to the teenager who loaded people onto the cage. "What about folks with claustrophobia?" I asked, hoping he would send me out of the gate. He assured me I would be okay. I wasn't going anywhere but down.

The cage was about four-feet square and he crammed seven of us in it and locked it. Then he loaded the cage under us and dropped us down the shaft. You know what? I wasn't claustrophobic at all. Not for one minute of the tour. I thoroughly enjoyed every second. It was fascinating. Our guide was a real, fourth-generation miner, and he showed us real equipment and a real gold vein in the granite. I didn't want to go back up.

The lesson for me was to never let a perceived fear stop me from enjoying new experiences. I did it for my kids, but I think I enjoyed it more than they. I had struck gold - or at least a golden moment.

You can contract Craig Harris at www.apparentlyso.net