I’ve been 32 years old for about a month now and I have to admit to being a bit disappointed. I expected that somehow being 32 would have imparted a bit more maturity into my life; a little more temperance. And yet having spent the better part of 6 hours the other week hiking a 13,000 foot peak in the middle of the night with a laser pointer and a liter of water, I’ve come to realize that perhaps this transition to adulthood will have to wait at least another year or so.  32 years is, in some respects, a long time, though not as long as say, the amount of time which passes when waiting to be served a cold drink on a scorching day in a seedy Nairobi restaurant. But nevertheless a lot can happen in 32 years if you allow it, or in my case enthusiastically embrace it. As someone eloquently once said, “if you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.”

There is, I suppose, a fine line between the edge and over the edge, and while some may no doubt question the sanity of many of my life choices, my continued existence upon this earth is proof that I have yet to cross that line. In my defense, I feel that I must point out that life has conspired to place me in hazardous conditions more often than the average adventurer, and while such experiences do in fact make superb story material, many were beyond my choosing.  I am sure there are countless times my mother wondered if I would survive this long, and so, in honor of achieving the ripe old age of 32, here are 32 of my best near-death experiences:  

1. Playing in my backyard in Sierra Leone and discovering two cobras that were also playing in the backyard.
2. Sprinting a record-breaking 1/4 mile down a dusty road at midnight with a pack of tribal bandits swinging axes and machetes close behind.
3. Surviving 8 white-knuckle hours in a Cambodian taxi on the back roads to Poipet only to discover that the driver had bribed the license bureau after failing his driving test.
4. Near heart failure in Sierra Leone when the wooden struts of the log bridge we were driving over collapsed from under the wheels of our truck (which provided a wonderful view of the 20 foot ravine below); fast-forward 12 years and an uncanny repeat of the incident in PNG which has instilled in me an intense dislike for log bridges.
5. Accidentally canoeing through a herd of hippos on a jungle river in west Africa.
6. Being hit by a train after falling asleep in a pick-up truck on the railroad tracks in central Ohio.
7. Waking up in the middle of the night to the sensation my sleep-bag-wrapped-body plummeting head first from the hammock which, nano-seconds before, had been securely fastened 15 feet up in the branches of a rather large oak tree.
8. Tied for 5 hours at gunpoint in a tropical rainforest; courtesy of a roving gang of burley New Guinean bandits.
9. Careening inches from a 200 foot cliff-face in a 4×4 truck while traversing a monsoon-induced landslide.
10. Running out of oxygen at 60 feet in the Bismarck Sea, only to discover my diving buddy had jokingly turning off the air to my scuba tank (not surprisingly, he later faced his own near-death experience).
11. Riding my horse bareback at a dead run and avoiding a deadly collision with a barb-wire fence post by bailing off into a gravel road.
12. Hiding for 2 hours behind a large rock on the wrong side of a Kenyan military shooting range during an exercise involving explosive mortar rounds.
13. Emergency evacuation to Panama for treatment of childhood pneumonia coupled with meningismus.
14. Choking down Twinkie-sized grubs in PNG, which, like America’s favorite snack, were also white and gooshy on the inside (maybe not life threatening, but at the time I thought I was going to die).
15. Trapped under a raft in the backwash of a 12-foot, Class 5 rapid on the Nile river.
16. Nurturing an acute, double-whammy case of typhoid and amoebic dysentery after spending 4 weeks on the Sepik river (probably from eating those twinkie-size grubs).
17. Hunkering down inside of 4 sleeping bags and trying to ignore the 60mph gusts that threatened to blow me off the 12,000 foot peak in northern Colorado where I was attempting to sleep in the dead of winter.
18. Blowing through a 15-man roadblock comprised of half-drunk, gun-swinging PNG natives.
19. 11 hours of hurtling through mud-thick logging trails and dense Cambodian street traffic, in the rain, on a dilapidated 250cc Honda dirt bike missing both sets of brakes and a functioning headlight.
20. Adroitly slipping out of a coconut tree and falling 15 feet onto a balmy beach in Kenya … with a 12″ hunting knife in hand.
21. Climbing into a 40ft stand of bamboo outside my middle school in the PNG highlands in order to escape [yet another] tribal fight.
22. Waking up in the wilderness of southern Colorado to discover bear tracks 20ft from my pillow; no doubt attracted by the half-empty soup cans unceremoniously deposited at the foot of my brother’s sleeping bag.
23. Near-miss lightning strike in a grass hut.
24. Hydro planing at 70mph in the pouring rain, jumping the median and clearing an 8ft highway crossing in a full loaded ’94 Ford Tempo Sedan.
25. Inadvertently intruding upon the secret ceremonies of a sect of Bon-Boni (vodoo) witch doctors in village of west Africa; viewing of the ceremony was under penalty of death.
26. Escaping Papua New Guinea’s avian version of the velociraptor [aka: a Cassowary] by climbing vines suspended from the rainforest canopy.
27. Swimming with severe leg cramps 200 feet off shore in the South Pacific after doing the breast stroke through a mob of several hundred blue-bottle jelly fish (perhaps not entirely life threatening, but given the excruciating pain on every surface of my body, I was wishing I was dead).
28. Haplessly mugged by 6 men in a restaurant in Nairobi.
29. Losing my eyebrows and most of my bangs after lighting a lantern in a closed-in tent with what turned out to be gasoline.
30. Walking down dark village paths at night with a flashlight trying not to fall into any passing Driver Ant colonies; large colonies having been known to consume small antelope.
31. Careening down a windy mountain road in PNG in a public bus only to crash head-on into a semi truck that had brilliantly managed to take up both lanes on a blind curve.
32. Mobbed by an angry Cambodian wedding party after collapsing their 80 foot pink wedding tent by running it over with my Toyota Tacoma.

Tags: Mirth & Misery