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Write your story from the point of view of someone learning or teaching an extreme hobby.

Posted in Narrative on Oct 26, 2022

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✍️ 19 stories

Last Wish

Submitted to Contest #129

There are many places to go, many things to do when winter draws by. The cold enveloped our little house and the world had already begun to sink from sight. Hunching over the kitchen sink, my son held the tip of a paperclip over the flame, watching it blacken clean. The light burnt across his winter cheeks, but his eyes seemed nothing, but marbles of sole darkness. I knew he was upset about the morning’s conversation, but this lady had made up her mind. I could see the blueberry cake rise up in the oven.“What are you thinking about, Jan...

33 likes 22 comments 22
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The Hunt

Submitted to Contest #129

The Hunt Ringerike, Norway. 806 CE  As Freydís watched from the doorway, her older brother knocked his spear against the bottom of his boot, dislodging snow, and her mother stood unconcerned at the loom near the hearth, placidly beating down the weft. The soft, familiar staccato passed through Freydís’ ears unheard. She imagined throwing her hands around Björn’s ankle and letting him drag her along the packed snow as he had done when she was smaller, and she hated herself for it. “Take me with you today.”  His eyes rose t...

25 likes 16 comments 16
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All's Fair in Love and Spar

Submitted to Contest #129

Glenn, our marriage counselor, self-proclaimed relationship expert, repeated herself: "I said, have you two ever considered boxing?" Tim and I exchanged glances. We were both thinking she'd lost her mind. It was the first thing we'd agreed on all day. "No, I can't say that I have," Tim said, emphasizing the second I. He turned back to Glenn and added, "But I can only speak for myself, right?" I shook my head no, both in response to Glenn's question and Tim's passive-aggressiveness. Glenn tapped her pen on her clipboard, uncrossed her...

21 likes 4 comments 4
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The Whip

Submitted to Contest #129

The moment I moved to Utah I wanted to rock climb. Growing up I was always a timid, shy kid. The thought of going downhill too fast on my bike, climbing a tree, or buying a pair of Heelies would make my knees weak. I don’t like this part of me. Driving into Utah for the first time as a teenager, I saw something. The mountains. Yes, I’ve seen the mountains before, but I’ve never seen them. The moment I entered the shadow of these pillow-topped giants, I was speechless, overwhelmed by a feeling of insignificance. The intimidation, the delicat...

15 likes 9 comments 9
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The Lightning Crashes and the Thunder Calls Out

Submitted to Contest #129

It was there again… It was always there.The weight pressed against his soul as he stood alone in the darkness. He took a deep breath, and lightning shattered the night. Thunder beat out, demanding that the world hear it. The burst of light faded, and the darkness seeped in and pressed against him. It threatened to consume him, but he wouldn’t falter.Blind to everything in the world, he shifted his feet and continued forward. For years, he had roamed this darkness, desperately seeking the faintest remnants of light.His light.His breathing gre...

15 likes 4 comments 4
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You gotta be brave before you can be good.

Submitted to Contest #129

You gotta be brave before you can be good. The Golden Gate Bridge loomed high above, as I gazed out at the choppy bay, the likes of which I had never seen. I’d windsurfed in all kinds of conditions and wave types, but this was different. There are two kinds of water here. The Bay water is runoff from the surrounding land. It is warmer and carries silt. But the Pacific Ocean is cold, stirred by upwellings and tides. This creates a perfect storm of sorts, resulting in turbulent, dangerous, ever-changing wave patterns. It is considered one o...

15 likes 3 comments 3
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Mark of Adventure

Submitted to Contest #129

CW graphic injury       As we wait in line, anxiety digs its sharp claws into my rapidly beating heart, my breathing feels a little unsteady, and my legs are itching to run in the other direction. The rubber handlebar grips are slippery with all the sweat soaking my palms, but I clutch them tightly. The bike is so heavy. What if I can’t lift it? The lift moves slow enough, but I cringe imagining myself struggling to get the bike onto it. I think of people laughing or shaking their heads at how weak I am. Then, w...

14 likes 15 comments 15
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Falling Upwards

Submitted to Contest #129

 We are somewhere behind them, our vantage point two hundred meters above and to their right. We are hiding within a small grove of fir trees with tired branches all droopy with their burdens of snow. The Instructor has his back to a sheer cliff face and is quietly talking to about five others, his arms gesturing this way and that, with around a thousand metres of bounce and screaming plummet below them. We had come up the mountain to check out reports of strange activity by a group of extreme sports enthusiasts and hadn’t expected to h...

13 likes 6 comments 6
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Submerged

Submitted to Contest #129

         The most shameful aspect of my decision to take up cave diving was that I hadn’t even come up with it on my own, despite all the Sundays of my childhood I spent exploring caves with my Uncle Bill, and the year of studying abroad in Australia I spent scuba diving. My only excuse is that my brain was a fetid stew after five months of listlessly sweating on my parents’ couch, half-heartedly applying for other forensic accounting jobs while becoming increasingly sure I never wanted to work in...

12 likes 7 comments 7
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A Cold-Hearted Lesson

Submitted to Contest #129

It is a clear cold day on Attitash Mountain in North Conway, New Hampshire. I have never skied before this day and I am in a cold sweat. My brother-in-law, Ron, rented some skis and boots for me and they are very tight on my feet. I feel like my feet need to breathe. My feet are panicking. I breathe in and out several times and try to locate my sister Ann, but she is nowhere to be found. I look around at the crowd of people waiting for the ski lift. They are all bundled up in bright cute ski outfits and seem so confident and carefree. W...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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Extreme Parenting: 101

Submitted to Contest #129

Dick and Jane both moved from separate and more interesting cities to the middle of the Midwest. They met and they married. After the wedding, they decided to have children. Unsure of the child rearing protocol in this unfamiliar region, Dick and Jane read a book. The book was titled Extreme Parenting 101: A Midwestern Philosophy. Written by Sally Doesmore, the manual was exactly 500 pages long. It contained 5 chapters. In order to get a gauge on the philosophy of their new neighborhood, Dick and Jane chose to read the first paragraph of eac...

12 likes 2 comments 2
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The White Russian

Submitted to Contest #129

I made two fateful mistakes that weekend. The first was agreeing to go on that trip. The second was, well more about that later.My two best friends from college, Liz and Mary had invited me to a fun filled weekend at a ski resort not too far from home. It was going to be great fun they said. It was going to be a relaxing weekend full of hot tubs, cozy fire places, nights of hot toddy’s at the bar, and fantastic skiing. I agreed to go.I had made it abundantly clear to my friends that I didn’t ski, but that I would be quite content spending my...

12 likes 4 comments 4
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Ice Scream

Submitted to Contest #129

"AWESOMEBALLS!" Snotsicles swung from his nostrils as eight-year-old Joey Henderson squeezed the belly of his puffy red snowsuit, jumping up and down in the packed snow."Here they COME! Heretheycome!" He waved frantically at the hulking column of contestants slumbering out through the frosty glass doors of Mount Hushmore's Ski Lodge Resort, trying desperately to grab someone's attention. Any one of them would do. All the Big Time Ballers were there, the Top SnoPros. Ice Screamers.There was Big Johnny McGlone, the monolithic six-foot-eight-in...

10 likes 8 comments 8
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The Mountaineer

Submitted to Contest #129

Experienced mountaineers are extremely cautious and always avoid taking unnecessary risks. Jake was not an experienced mountaineer.He had been to a few classes, of course; he wasn’t that stupid. He knew to check the harness every time, double check the knots, how to haul himself out of an icy crevasse with altitude sickness and a broken arm…that sort of thing. In fact, altitude sickness was the one thing that they’d covered on the course that had spooked him a little. High-altitude cerebral edema, they said, is what happens when fluid collec...

10 likes 6 comments 6
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A Fugue of Fugues

Submitted to Contest #129

Oh to reach the apex, to cross the rubicon, to land on the moon. This was the byproduct of men with money and time. They would traverse the great mother leaving plastic bottles and wrappers frozen in time beneath ice and wind. If the world of men was to still itself by some great war and completely waive themselves from the face of the earth, thought Ang Phurba Phuti, the world would slowly wake, turn, and groan back to life. Humans would reemerge eventually. They would reinvent everything; the wheel, combustible engines, then the ...

10 likes 3 comments 3
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