Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” After losing her job and eventually herself, writer and Jezebel friend Noelle Hancock took Eleanor’s words to heart, spending a year of her life doing one scary thing a day. The result is her memoir My Year With Eleanor. In the following excerpt, she’s halfway through her hike up Mount Kiliminjaro.
Three hours after leaving Horombo, my guide Dismas and I arrived at Zebra Rock. It had once been just a black lava cliff, but years of mineral-rich rain had stripped the color so that it was now covered in white stripes. I had to admit, Zebra Rock was striking to behold. Emphasis on the behold. While I was admiring the view, I noticed an arrestingly steep hiking trail winding up the mountain next to Zebra Rock. I pulled my sunglasses down the bridge of my nose to stare at it over the tops of the lenses. Then I looked at Dismas.
“Wait, we’re not actually climbing up that thing, are we? It’s practically vertical. Is that even legal?”
“It’s like a narrow stairway to heaven, no?” Dismas answered dreamily.
“It’s the road to hell, Dismas,” I said flatly.
“Poly-poly, Noelley. Poly-poly.”
“Slowness is not a problem for me, in case you haven’t noticed. If I were to go any slower, I’d be standing still.” He responded with a grin.
Despite its steepness, it was not as bad as I anticipated. I settled into a groove and my breathing relaxed. Groups of other hikers were gathered at the top, snacking on various provisions. A guy from the church group offered some pieces of dried mango that looked about the way that I felt.
By the time I returned to Horombo, the hikers who had climbed the summit that morning were staggering in looking like the backup zombies from the “Thriller” video. They were wild eyed and stiff limbed, not to mention completely filthy. During dinner a fourteen-year-old boy rose from the table next to ours and, without a word to his family, walked outside the dining hall. Through the window we saw him double over and vomit three times. A few minutes later we saw a dusty woman being helped to her cabin in the posture of an injured football star, each arm slung over the neck of a porter. Marie and I exchanged worried glances. Henri asked the German couple next to us with telltale sunburned noses whether there had been any snow at the peak. “No, but there was hail on the way down,” the man answered.
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