Still Standing (Slightly Tilted): Vol. 7 – Nailing The Landing

Somewhere along the way, the stories slowed down. Not because I ran out of ideas. Definitely not because I suddenly became the poster child for good decision-making. Because life has a way of adjusting your altitude.

There was a time when everything felt like a dare. Climb it. Jump it. Try it. Figure it out on the way down. If you’ve been along for this ride, you know how that played out.

Phones rigged with precision. Goldfish that never saw it coming. Dorms climbed, rooftops conquered, antennas trusted far more than they should’ve been. Storms sailed into. Sharks… misidentified. A whole lot of moments that could’ve gone a different way.

But they didn’t. That matters more than I realized at the time. Somewhere along the line… all those bad decisions, near misses, and “this seems fine” moments built something I didn’t even know I was building.

Summer of 1985.

Camp Cedarledge in Pevely, Missouri. I was a Girl Scout Program Director—one of my jobs was hauling fresh water up to the horse corral. Simple enough. Until it wasn’t. I parked the van near the stable, where 20+ horses were tethered. In the blink of an eye, the van started smoking. Then flames. Then the structure itself started catching.

The Horse Director yelled, “Run for your life!” and everyone did. Except me. All I could see were those horses—tied up, trapped. For whatever reason, one thought locked in: If they don’t make it… that’s on me.

Now, let’s be clear—I had zero qualifications for what happened next. No training. No plan. No idea how this was going to go. Just instinct and fear of the consequences. So, I started untying horses. One after another. They were scared. Panicked. Nipping. Stepping. Fighting to get free. Noise everywhere. Heat building. Chaos.

And I just… kept going. One. Two. Three. At some point, it stops being a decision. You’re just in it. Somewhere around horse seven or eight, the crew came back. Inspired? Maybe. Convinced I was out of my mind? Also, possible. But they returned. Together—we got every single horse out. Not one lost. The structure? Gone.

Now here’s the part that hits me today: That wasn’t courage I learned in that moment. That was something built long before it. All those years of testing limits, trusting instincts, stepping into things without a full plan… For once, it showed up when it actually mattered.

Fast forward years later. Different setting. Same kind of moment. Driving to SFA School on Highway 55 after a light icing. Everyone knows bridges freeze first. Apparently, everyone except the cars spinning out in front of me.

I’m near the Anheuser-Busch Brewery in St. Louis. Cars are sliding left. Cars are sliding right. Wrecks happening in real time. No clean path. No good options. And in that split second, every version of me from Vol. 1 through Vol. 6 showed up. Not the smartest version, but the one that had been in tight spots before. So I did the only thing that made sense in that moment. I channeled my inner Cole Trickle… and hit the gas.

Now, I’m not recommending this as a life strategy. Let’s be very clear about that. Somehow, everything lined up. The car held. The path opened. I came out the other side. And yeah… I may have let out a full-on, adrenaline-fueled scream when it was over. No shame.

Looking back, that moment felt familiar. Not because it was safe. But because I’d been in “figure it out right now” situations before. That’s the thread through all of this.

Not luck alone. Not just survival. But a strange kind of preparation… built through years of doing things I probably shouldn’t have been doing. I don’t glorify the risks. I can’t ignore what they built.

Instinct. Trust. A willingness to step in when stepping back would be easier. These days, I don’t go looking for the edge the way I used to. I don’t need to. Because I’ve already been there. Still standing. Still tilted.

Now, with a better understanding of why. Because in the end… it wasn’t about the dares. It wasn’t about the stories. It wasn’t even about how close I got to the edge. It was about this:

When the moment came, when it actually mattered, I didn’t freeze. I didn’t run. I stepped in. Somehow, that made all the difference.

That’s nailing the landing!