BS: Okay, what spooks you???

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Blind DRunk in Blind River
Date: 21 May 12 - 03:06 PM

I flippin' AGREE! And what about number 3, eh? Even flippin' WORSE!!!

- Shabe

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: frogprince
Date: 21 May 12 - 02:05 PM

I hope Ebbie will forgive me for that last post. : )

Something just reminded me of one other thing: multi-person public toilets without stall doors. As at the state recreation area near us. A couple of years ago I was compelled to use the dumper there, and found myself sitting with a toddler standing there staring at me. Now I'm farm-raised. So far as peeing goes, I'm just inhibited enough not to stand there and do it in the presence of women other than my wife. But the thought of having anyone, including my wife, watch me go number two makes my hair stand on end.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Ebbie
Date: 20 May 12 - 02:33 AM

oh

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: frogprince
Date: 19 May 12 - 11:25 PM

Te sound of a distant toilet flushing :)

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Ebbie
Date: 19 May 12 - 10:50 PM

sheesh Please don't tell me that we are to be treated with yet another aspect of someone's mind. Boris, go away.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: LilyFestre
Date: 19 May 12 - 09:43 PM

Empty halls in a hospital.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Boris the Spider
Date: 19 May 12 - 07:10 PM

You're the perfect example of an ignorant, know-nothing, arachnid-hating human being without the brains of a fruit fly, gnu. I bet you're an ugly bastard too. I feel sorry for any spiders who are forced by circumstance to inhabit the same general area of this lovely world that you do, and I hope for their sake that a large and heavy tree falls on you, and sooner rather than later.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,mando-player-91
Date: 19 May 12 - 03:59 PM

Mitt Romney
Rick Santourum
heights and video footage of Joe Mccarthy

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: gnu
Date: 19 May 12 - 02:57 PM

Yo, Boris. Stay on yer own web and I'll stay on mine.

Yer right. Stay scared a me on accounta I ain't scared a you. Think "termination with severe prejudice" you multi-eyed, multi-legged, hairy-assed motherf***er.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Boris the Spider
Date: 19 May 12 - 01:13 PM

You human arachniphobes give me such a pain! You're 10,000 times bigger than us, for gosh sakes! We're terrified of YOU, and we have good reason to be, because a lot of you are arachnicidal maniacs who kill us with no provocation. Why can't you relate to a simple concept like sharing the world peacefully, live and let live? You just eat your food (pigs, cattle, chickens and plants), we'll eat ours (bugs), and we can co-exist with no problems at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Crowhugger
Date: 19 May 12 - 12:30 PM

I'm also arachnophobic but only indoors, though with great effort I can kill them with a custom long handled spider killer. Fortunately in my house spiders almost never grow unsquishably big. Eventually I stop shuddering. I'm shuddering as I write this. Yet outdoors they don't bother me at all, I can even have them on my hand to move them out of harm's way. Makes no sense at all.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 19 May 12 - 10:43 AM

Do you mean like the famous Irish millionnaire Aristotle O'Nassis?

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 May 12 - 11:22 PM

Maybe GUEST thinks Obama is Irish.......

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bert
Date: 18 May 12 - 11:04 PM

But, there is no apostrophe in Obama.

But you wouldn't expect an unnamed chicken shit GUEST to know that would you?

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 May 12 - 09:55 PM

Heh! Yeah...

But, there is no apostrophe in Obama.

Bill, I understand your viewpoint perfectly...I once held that same viewpoint myself, indeed it was the very basis of my young outlook onh life...but it just wasn't enough in the long run. So I added some additional viewpoints to it, and some of them concern things which by their very nature cannot be proven (or disproven), and do not provide any empirical or measurable evidence, but can only be experienced in an inner subjective manner. What I experience within my own consciousness is not observable through outer means and it never will be.

I don't demand physical evidence for things which lie completely outside the parameters of physical evidence and which are inacessible through sense perception, but are nevertheless experienced in a conscious manner. Philosophical and spiritual and romantic concepts of all kinds are among those things, and we all hold such concepts dear to us, whether or not we ever admit to doing so. Science can't help us with those, because they are not tied to physical evidence of any sort. Philosophy, literature, art, discussion, relationship, music, and direct experience of life itself can. They are things approached through thought, through emotion, through reason, and through inner feeling. They aren't physical, although they resonate within and throughout our experience OF physicality. And they are real...because everyone experiences them as real and very meaningful phenomena (of a non-physical sort).

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST
Date: 18 May 12 - 07:58 PM

The prospect of either O'Bama being re-elected or Romney elected.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bill D
Date: 18 May 12 - 07:50 PM

"I don't worry too much about whether politicians consult astrological charts."

*I* don't worry specifically about that, but as I said, about the human mind-set that allows them to base decisions on ANY unproven metaphysical concepts. This makes them think they have an excuse to foist it on the rest of us. (We can debate all day whether the need to 'foist' came first, or the acceptance of the metaphysical concept.)

Thus, like Descartes, I practice doubt and investigate whether a claim hangs together even after doubt.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 May 12 - 05:28 PM

Eliza, Arthur sounds charming to me. I regret never having had the chance to meet him.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 May 12 - 05:13 PM

I follow you, Bill. ;-) I think most people imagine themselves to be reasonable, clever, and careful. Many think, as they enter a room, "I am probably the most reasonable, clever, and careful person here". It's fairly natural for the human ego to think that way...although it can sometimes take a dive into self-hatred, in which case it thinks as it enters the room "What a hopeless, miserable failure I am. I hope no one notices it. I must try to cover it up somehow!"

Some people bounce back and forth a great deal between one state and the other, depending on how things are going...or how they think things are going.

Kind of sad, isn't it?

I don't worry too much about whether politicians consult astrological charts. I worry more about the great financial and imperial forces that dangle them on the puppet strings while they are consulting astrological charts.

Either way, though, no matter how much I worry about it, I can essentially do nothing about it, and that's worrisome too.

Makes for a lot to worry about, doesn't it? And again, it's kind of sad. It would be nice to stop worrying entirely, and just live in the present.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Don Firth
Date: 18 May 12 - 04:46 PM

One good thing about having a resident spider or two around (assuming that it isn't a tarantula or black widow or something of that nature) is that they keep the other bugs down.

And you're never really lonesome. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 18 May 12 - 03:09 PM

My late friend Maureen and her husband had a lovely house, where I was often invited. But they also had an absolutely enormous spider which lived in the skirting boards. They refused to do anything about him (why should they?) and called him Arthur. I spent the whole time in their sitting room screwing my head round to see if Arthur was about. Only twice did he appear, and each time I was out of there like a rocket. The husband used to get very annoyed. He loved Arthur. I didn't.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 18 May 12 - 02:50 PM

When I was amatorily pursuing my (eventual) wife (48 years
ago), I was bemused by her fear of slopes and heights.

There didn't need to be thousands (or hundreds, or even tens) of
feet of exposure to spook her. If we went hiking or camping,
and she had to descend a slope of say twenty-five degrees (or more,
of course), making up an total "exposure" of a foot and a half
above the lower, relatively flat level, and even if there were
sizable footholds in the rocks, amounting to a staircase down,
she would sit, facing the downslope, and "sit" down that little
slope.

She was not a child; 33 years old at the time.

I blessed the fact that neither of the houses we have subsequently
owned had a "staircase" with more than two steps.

This fear or set of fears stayed with her for quite a few
years. But one day I realized that she had just descended about a
five-foot thirty-five degree downslope without sitting down!
Later I saw her climb a kitchen stepladder to get at dishes
in a high cabinet--a behavior that never could have occurred
when we were newlyweds.

What happened? Damfino.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bert
Date: 18 May 12 - 01:26 PM

Nicely put BillD.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bill D
Date: 18 May 12 - 01:21 PM

"What specific (and justifiable) reason is there for someone else not to take seriously various things that you don't happen to believe in or take seriously, Bill?"

Why, because I am so reasonable & clever & careful! ☺ Just ask me!

"...you may have some prior assumptions about it, yes, but they are quite likely mistaken assumptions. " How could this be if I am so reasonable & clever & careful? It is "mistaken assumptions" that I so diligently joust against! (Damn whirling blades...help me, Sancho!)

"And that's just the way life is. We're different. That's a bit of a mystery. And it will remain so. " Ah....now THERE'S a bit of truth....both trivial & profound at the same time. Therefore I both accept it and explore its relevance.

"If it spooks you, then you do feel threatened by it on some level?

Well, it seems Ronald Reagan made 'some' decisions based on Nancy's conferring with a famous astrologer. I don't need to know why she was 'different' to know it spooked me. *wry grin* What spooks me is wondering how many other aspects of MY life are being affected by the metaphysical whimsys of those who are not as ummm... "reasonable & clever & careful" as I strive to be.
   Right now, forces are at work in the political system of the US to insert their 'metaphysical whimsys' into the fabric of MY society. Why would I NOT be concerned with the root concepts involved in "taking seriously various things that I don't happen to believe in or take seriously"?

This is both a light-hearted game AND a serious exercise, Little Hawk. It just depends on the context.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 May 12 - 09:51 PM

As for spiders, every house has some spiders in it. That's a guarantee. If you can't live with knowing that...then you've got a problem! ;-) I'm always getting rid of their webs and I've taken a great many of them outdoors, wrapped up in a bit of kleenex or sucked them up in the hose vacuum. Despite my efforts, there are always more of them. Fortunately, though, they don't scare me at all, I just don't like the mess they make indoors with their webs and the cast off remains of dead bugs, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 May 12 - 09:45 PM

What specific (and justifiable) reason is there for someone else not to take seriously various things that you don't happen to believe in or take seriously, Bill?

After all, you don't know their reasons for taking a thing seriously. Oh, you may have some prior assumptions about it, yes, but they are quite likely mistaken assumptions. In any case, you don't know why I or someone else decided to take something seriously...even though you didn't. It's just different from you, but that doesn't necessarily make it "bad" or "wrong". Therefore, there's no real reason why it should "spook" you if they do take something seriously that you don't....unless just not knowing why they do spooks you. ;-)

I don't know why you think the way you do. Neither do you know why I think the way I do. And that's just the way life is. We're different. That's a bit of a mystery. And it will remain so. Uncertainty or mystery about such things is not a threat...it's a common and enduring aspect of existence.

If it spooks you, then you do feel threatened by it on some level.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:27 PM

I've never been a great fan of Jay Leno, I think he's funny as a brick and didn't like the way he elbowed in ahead of Letterman and Conan. But seeing the retropsective on Johnny Carson - who I adored!- it came out that Jay had his manager plant a false story that Johnny was going to quit- during the time Johnny was in mourning for the accidental death of his son.
Johnny was so fed up by the fall out he DID quit.

Leno is just a first class creep the kind you meet at work, school,in non profits, who acts like Mr. Nice Guy and is a Machievellian sinister crreature.

So that's it,minor as it may sound in the scheme of the universe:
Jay Leno
Stalin
bats

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 May 12 - 03:11 PM

I rather like household spiders- or at least I'm glad I have help keeping bugs and flies and other varmints under control. Same as with frogs and snakes in the garden.

However, if you want/need to get rid of a spider, spray before knocking down the web; much better chance of getting the critter.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bettynh
Date: 17 May 12 - 01:06 PM

Off topic, but...

When I moved here (my grandfather's house) I cleaned out the garage of old pesticides and brought them to the local Extension office (they were handling toxic waste at the time). The main ingredient in one insecticide from the 50s? Thorazine (better known as the first effective drug used for schizophrenics). Maybe if you spread it around the garden, you wouldn't care if the bugs were eating everything?? I don't know. Just reporting in...

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bill D
Date: 17 May 12 - 12:26 PM

"The very mention of things like reincarnation spooks BillD. ;-) He can't help but react accordingly."

Nawwww... what spookes me is being surrounded by those who DO take stuff like reincarnation seriously! Why, who knows what other strange ideas are churning around in their heads! ;>)

But since JinK mentions old pesticides, I am reminded of an event when I worked on a special project at EPA during its first year. My partner & I were in Davenport, Iowa to investigate its town 'dump', a story in itself... but we stopped at a little diner in a somewhat seedy area close by.
We went in, sat down, ordered something as 'safe' as possible.... and I leaned back and looked UP. The place had a drop ceiling with those panels in a metal framework.... and hanging from many intersecting spots (we counted 18) some right over the grill & food storage area were **Shell No-Pest Strips**. Dichlorvos or 2,2-dichlorovinyl dimethyl phosphate

No insect had a chance! A fly that came in the door would probably not get 3 feet. We ate our lunch...'considered' getting the cameras and documenting the place, but the proprietor did not look like the sort who would be amused.
Yes, you can still buy essentially the same item today.

(Later in the project we did photograph one hanging from the internal mirror in a closed VW Van in 90°F weather.)

People who hate 'bugs' seem to be willing to take their chances with chemicals.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 May 12 - 12:22 PM

Edges more than heights. *I* wouldn't have been able to get across that chasm. And knowing it's safe doesn't help, I've frozen when the worst that could happen was I'd get dirty. What helps is having a stick for a third leg - it doesn't have to be a *sturdy* stick, I don't lean on it, I just use it to know where the ground is when one foot is off the ground during a step over or near an edge.
The neuropsych of this is interesting, it is also why when you're carrying a cup that is too full, look where you're going, not at the cup. If you look at the cup you will spill it, but if you don't, you won't. Usually.
Anyway, central vision ties into the brain part that guides your motion towards something, and peripheral vision is supposed to be tied into the part of your motor system that keeps that motion towards something smooth, but in my case there's weird feedback so that, at an edge where peripheral vision says there is nothing, I can't keep my motions smooth so my brain says Don't Go There and I feel fear AND can't override my brain and go there anyway, nobody tells my legs anything either. So, having the stick gives my motor system something else to be smooth by, so I'm suddenly OK again.
Cool stuff, eh!

Also, I am not as afraid of mice as my late lamented father, who once jumped up onto a coffee table and immediately back down again as if he hadn't when hosting a dinner party (it was drinks-before-dinner time) with ministers no less... but the way they (mice, not ministers) move gives me the absolute creeps and I feel a physical shiver up my spine as if I were trying to moult or something. It must be a primeval shake-the-bug-off thing.

I have a current lodger with a real creep-out about spiders, abundant in our biome... he can be fun out on the porch. Dinner *and* a show!

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 17 May 12 - 11:11 AM

Quite a long time ago, just after some of the nastiest insecticides had been recently banned, the exterminator who made his fourth trip to our house in response to my then-accomplice-living-companion's spider report explained that:

"I can't completely eliminate spiders in your house, because they won't allow use of anything that will kill them. The best I can do is maybe get them drunk enough that they'll follow me out to the truck looking for another shot."

Even the common "Raid" sometimes only puts them to sleep temporarily, unless can "really soak 'em."

For the "inside" kinds most common in our area now, about the only time you see a spider is when one has wiped out all the bugs in one place and is looking for a new place where the food is better. As long as they're happy, they generally stay out of sight - but of course

they're still there somewhere.

(A bit of encouragement for the squeamish(?))

John

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 May 12 - 10:51 AM

Eliza:

My naughty pupils (aged 10) found out my phobia when a spider appeared in the classroom sink. They brought in every kind of rubber spider to leave on my chair, in my drawer, even in the Register. It's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack, the little horrors!

Which little horrors! Two- or eight-legged?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 May 12 - 10:16 AM

The very mention of things like reincarnation spooks BillD. ;-) He can't help but react accordingly.

What spooks me is the thought that a few Americans will still be bitching on Mudcat Cafe about their crazy 2-party political system long after I have left this life behind me. But it doesn't spook me very much...

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Green Man
Date: 17 May 12 - 07:09 AM

The fact that they have all the best weaponry and technology and not one whit of sense about when to stop using them.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 17 May 12 - 05:30 AM

My naughty pupils (aged 10) found out my phobia when a spider appeared in the classroom sink. They brought in every kind of rubber spider to leave on my chair, in my drawer, even in the Register. It's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack, the little horrors!

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bill D
Date: 16 May 12 - 10:29 PM

Oh, right....a prior incarnation. In Siberia, hunting wooly mammoths, no doubt.

I think it may be more likely that I remember my days delivering newspapers at 5AM in 0°F weather.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: frogprince
Date: 16 May 12 - 09:29 PM

Bill D, in all probability it's because you froze to death, or at least died of hypothermia, in a prior incarnation.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bill D
Date: 16 May 12 - 08:13 PM

Agreeing with Jeri.... I don't 'like' sudden encounters with bugs, but once I know where they are, I can deal with them. Likewise, I am cautious about heights, but I will climb ladders, trees, roofs and/or walk near canyons as long as I feel in control. Snakes? No problem once I know what & where they are. (I once held an 8ft. 40 lb. Burmese Rock Python as it (she) continuously explored me as a climbing post.) No problems with closed spaces (had an MRI once). I like flying....I LOVE looking down at the world.

The only thing I can remember dreading is the idea of being in a traffic accident in cold, rainy or icy weather and lying injured on a street in nasty freezing conditions. I don't dwell on this... it just pops up now & then, and I shudder. I have no idea why.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Jeri
Date: 16 May 12 - 07:33 PM

There are some things you don't want to squash just because you'd have to call FEMA or throw out a book or something.

I was a bit arachnophobic when I was a kid, but somehow managed to grow out of it.

I can't think of anything that always spooks me now, although fast, unexpected, unpredictable things can probably spook anyone. The fat dive-bombing fly that hits your face or other area on your head when you're trying to sleep, the wasp that's crawling on you that you manage to recognize milliseconds before you whack it.

When I was doing my laundry last week, there was a mouse in a bright corner of the basement, trying to fuse with the architecture. I don't know whether it was lost in the light or had been into the poison, but it was too dazed to try to run away. I had time to get a live trap and nudge the little guy into it. Then I took it to the pond where it probably fed something. It ran from me then, but not with any sort of conviction, so I think it probably didn't last long.

Things can startle me, but I don't usually STAY freaked out, and I'm happy being that way.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: gnu
Date: 16 May 12 - 07:18 PM

"where it is probably (still)..."

Hahahahaa.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 16 May 12 - 06:53 PM

Heights. (Can't get past the third rung of a ladder.) Some spiders ("daddy longlegs"-types don't bother me). Centipedes (ugh!). Fire. (Thanks to Life Magazine's pictures of a Catholic school fire -- Our Lady of the Angels -- in Chicago in the 1958.)

Once in my kitchen I was accosted by a HUGE brown ugly spider. It was waaaay too big to squish (I don't even want to think about it), so I did what any red-blooded American woman would do -- I grabbed a can of Raid (I usually don't keep this kind of thing around, preferring products less damaging to my health and that of the cats) and sprayed the hell out of it. It fell behind the bookcase...where it is probably (still) mutating into The Spider That Ate Nottingham. I cringe when I think of it. (No way am I moving that bookcase!)

Linn

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 16 May 12 - 04:39 PM

Ah, that makes it clear Bert, thanks. Have to say, all other creepy-crawlies are fine by me. I've seen all sorts, even poisonous things like scorpions which have a habit of getting into shoes and sandals while you're in bed. (Check before putting on in morning!) But our eight-legged friends....no!

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 16 May 12 - 04:39 PM

Being ill, growing old and more ill in a strange country. Getting to the point in my decline that I cannot travel to see my kids nor can I afford to pay for them to travel to visit me.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Bert
Date: 16 May 12 - 04:10 PM

(I always thought fear of spiders was arachnaphobia?) Yes if you want to be specific. Entomophobia is kind of an inclusive term and is generally held to include fear of all creepy crawlies.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: gnu
Date: 16 May 12 - 03:58 PM

froggy... "I can't tolerate standing anywhere near the edge of a cliff or building without a railing, which I realize is fairly common;..."

Common? Indeed it is. It's a survival instinct most commonly found in animals with enough intelligence not to do that.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: frogprince
Date: 16 May 12 - 12:22 PM

I could just say "height", but my reaction is unpredictable, with no logical consistency. I can't tolerate standing anywhere near the edge of a cliff or building without a railing, which I realize is fairly common; as long as there is an apparently sturdy railing, I'm not bothered at all. Being in a plane, however small, or a hot air balloon, doesn't bother me in the least. But to change a ceiling light comfortably, I need a good stepladder; if I stand on a stool even a foot off the floor, and extend my reach up for any reason, I'm very shakey. We went to the Grand Canyon a few years ago. We walked a just a little way down the Bright Angel trail. I wasn't really panicky, but it made me edgy. The next day we rode down on mules. I found myself leaning over to look down without the least discomfort.
My nephew has a boat and parasail. I'm really torn about trying the thing; I really don't know whether I would take it in stride, or stress out to the point of potential heart attack.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 16 May 12 - 11:22 AM

I'm glad it's now considered normal behaviour to have a fear of spiders. I must say, the ones I saw in Senegal and Ghana would make anybody's hair stand on end... absolutely gigantic black furry things, and they could give a nasty bite too, as they had a habit of jumping down onto your head. (UGH!). (I always thought fear of spiders was arachnaphobia?)

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: scouse
Date: 16 May 12 - 05:05 AM

America!!!

As Aye,

Phil.

Subject: RE: BS: Okay, what spooks you???
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 May 12 - 01:46 AM

I used to go high up the Oregon Cascades camping with my oldest brother. Early on, we were traveling on a narrow dirt road- actually a pushed-through road meant to allow firefighting equipment when needed - higher and higher; at each curve only blue sky blazed ahead of us. If we had met anyone coming the other way we would have had to back up for who knows how far.

I became terrified. It felt like our camper was on a shelf with nothing below, a shelf that might break off any moment.

I finally told Bill. He immediately stopped the truck and told me to get out and look out over the edge.

Cautiously I did- and found that far from being a shelf, the ground sloped gently away from us.

He said that I wasn't as bad off as he had been when he first started; he said that the first time he went to the edge on his hands and knees.