First Story Essay Thing

This is an essay I wrote about a personal experiance I had. It was written around 3/6/09.

“An Autobiographical Anecdote”
An Incident at the Peak

The lofty mountain of the Steens Range in south-east Oregon is an area that I hold dear to my heart. I have many fond recollections of the place, riding horses on the trails, shooting sage rats, and eating roasted hot dogs by the fire. Of all my reminiscences however, one burns brightest in my memory, one not as pleasant as these.
It was a warm day in mid-July, my dad, his friend and I had been riding up to a mountain peak. Our horses were dripping wet with white foam as they labored up the steep trail. Our gay conversation filled the still air, pausing only when concentration was needed to guide our steeds over rough terrain. Lofty pine trees stood sentinel over our little caravan. We had set our enthusiastic eyes on a distant summit back at camp, and we were determined to reach the top and return triumphant to the awaiting families at dusk.
It was around noon when we rounded a bend, and found that we had at last, reached our goal. With Jubilant shouts, we congratulated ourselves on our tenacity as we rode to a point and looked far out across the desert below. I had been tired of sitting in the hard saddle, so I eased off painfully and took some faltering steps, regaining feeling in my legs. After eagerly consuming my food, I became listless and uninterested in the surroundings, since I was at that age where mountain views were oh-so- boring. I soon looked for something to do.
My youthful eyes soon found a source of entertainment. A lone snow bank cascaded down the mountain for several hundred feet, and in my romantic, eager eyes, this would be fun to slide down! I boldly stepped to the edge and looked down. Of course I slipped. Down I slid on my rear, sliding over rocks, roots, and other quite hard materials. Time stood still, really, it did, or still enough for me to feel every stone, branch and miniature precipice that I slide over. I was saved about 30 feet down the mountain by a hardy tree, whose trunk gave my slide a jolting end.
The horse ride home was not a comfortable one indeed. Every jolting step jarred my throbbing backside as we rode through the mountains; I felt like bringing back the contents of my lunch all over the saddle. Of course it did not help that the sandwich I had consumed was squished and hot and tasted of horse sweat… The horse seemed to enjoy my suffering as he would step awkwardly over a fallen tree, or jump over a dribble of a creek that he could of easily stepped over. However, I lived through the suffering and aguish that I had inflicted upon myself, and now I had a great story to tell my children and grandchildren.
Experiences such as this one are what shape a person’s character and life. No matter how humorous or serious, incidents cause memories and wisdom, and later in life, they are what will really matter on this earth. No matter how much money a person has, or possessions, in the end, when the body is broken and the muscles feeble, memories will be all that a person has. Sliding down a mountain on my glutious maximus will be a great story to tell my kids!
I will never forget the classic experience, the rush of sliding down an icy peak, the shattering collision, but most of all, the ride home and listening to the jokes and wisecracks about the slide. I can already picture myself, ninety-five and a shriveled, dried-out old man laughing gleefully in a nursing home about my fall down the mountain. I can hardly wait.
Experiences like this one, although painful and somewhat humorous, have shaped who I am, and will shape who I will become.