Rebellion

There have been many times when I've felt inclined to rebel in some sort of way. It never had to be major, but it had to be just enough to satisfy my boredom with following orders. I've often rebelled to make a statement more for myself than to anyone else. I don't like the idea of making an external statement because that does very little for the person inside. However, if someone ends up rebelling for the sake of their sanity, that is the most important reason to defy authority.

Every year, I go on a rock climbing trip with my climbing team. We often pick some place that is hard to get to on a regular basis. It usually involved a long plane ride to the other side of the country and then an even longer drive during which everyone drifts in and out of consciousness. Past trips have been to Yosemite Valley in California and Red River Gorge in Kentucky. My most memorable trip though, has to be the only one that we've ever taken to Red Rock, Nevada, right outside of Las Vegas.

This was my sophomore year. Just a week prior to leaving on vacation, I tried to convince my family to let me stay home for April vacation. I hated going away while everyone stayed back and had social lives. Naturally, I didn't enjoy myself as much as I should have on these trips because I always felt short-changed with my social life because of them. I never outright rebelled during these trips. I was always stuck in a bad mood, counting down until I got to go home.

Our group was presented with a great opportunity to defy authority. We were camping out in the desert and so we were surrounded by nothing and had to create our own entertainment. Every night, when it would get dark, we could see nothing in the distance by the beam of the Luxor pointing up at the sky from behind the hills of the desert. We'd often try to imagine how to get to that beam on foot through the desert.

One night, a group member by the name of Sam asked my father if he and the rest of the males could hike up the hill at night to see Vegas in the dark from afar. My father provided an interesting response: they could have hiked if they hadn't asked but now that they did, they were forbidden to. Sam took this as a "go ahead" to do as he pleased, trying to adopt my father's "do first, apologize later" way of life. At midnight on the last night that we were in the desert, he and the two other boys of the group sprinted out of the tent with their headlamps and disappeared into the night.

Everyone that was awake and left behind ended up being all of the girls, including myself. We debated the issue for about an hour and decided to copy the boys by going up the hill to see Vegas. After launching ourselves out of the tent and stopping to think a few hundred yards down the road, we decided to use the beam of the Luxor as our literal guiding light. Since we had no bearings in the dark and couldn't see any landmarks, we decided that if we went toward the beam enough, we'd eventually hit the hills and be able to reach our goal.

About fifteen minutes into the hike, two of the 6 of us decided that they didn't want part in this anymore. We didn't want to go back because we'd made it so far already but our peers were adamant about doubling back and undoing our progress. We ended up giving them 2 of our flashlights and a phone and were left with 2 flashlights for our subdivision and 2 cell phones for emergencies. We left one phone on just in case the girls were in trouble and turned the other off to conserve battery, and did the same with the flashlights.

My subdivision successfully reached the top of some hill and was able to take in the breathtaking view. It was a view that could have only been paralleled by that from a plane, except that we had no other light pollution or noises except for those that nature created in the desert. The four of us sat speechless for twenty timed minutes. Once our premeditated twenty minutes were up, we started heading back to avoid being gone too long.

We made the trip back without any problems, just like the trip there. However, when we go into the tent, we were met with a barrage of screaming and anger from the two girls that left and (surprisingly) the boys who had done the same exact thing that we did. They lectured us about immaturity and recklessness. Usually when I am yelled at, I wilt and break. This time, though, I knew that I had done everything in my power for the trip to go smoothly (and it did) and that the other subdivisions were being hypocrites. Though the four of us couldn't convince the others of their hypocrisy, we were still unaffected by their useless screaming and ranting.

The next morning, we acted as if nothing happened and packed up camp. On the plane ride back, no mention was made of our adventures the previous night so that we wouldn't get in trouble with my father. Later on in the year, however, Sam proudly told my father that he went ahead and did the hike and that all of the girls followed him. Naturally, I was the only one who got in trouble for all of this, but for some reason, my father's yelling didn't upset me at all. I guess I was fed up with constantly answering for other people's decisions. He also tried to guilt me and my best friend into missing a fun party at next year's climbing trip but we knew that we couldn't be made to feel guilty about something that we didn't regret.

I generally shy away from rebellion, especially if it is going to get me into a difficult situation. This time, however, I went with my gut instinct and took a reckless risk. We could have seriously gotten hurt, but the bonding experience combined with the view made it all worth it. After this, I adopted a new motto when I was unsure of whether I should go ahead with a risky move or not: no regrets.