This is a really nice picture of my wife as she sits on a stone wall with Chatanooga in the background. But this is also a picture of when I thought she had only seconds to live. As with every pic, there is a story behind it.
It was March Break 2025 when we decided to travel to Nashville, Tennessee. One of the reasons why I picked this destination was because the campgrounds are open and we love to camp. I will always choose a campsite over a hotel because it adds to the value and experience of travelling, plus it is a lot cheaper. But there was a wee problem that the nights can be on the freezing side, hence why I called our March Break trip Trying Not To Freeze to Death While Camping.
This picture was taken on Monday, March 10, 2025. We had visited the battle site of Chickamauga in Georgia and it was only natural to visit the next site that is connected historically, Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After the Confederate victory in Chickamauga, the Union retreated to Chattanooga to regroup and resupply. Lookout Mountain was a great post for the Confederate scouts to watch over the town and report any Union movement. The hope was to lay siege and force the Union army to surrender. That did not happen and we all know what the eventual outcome of the Civil War was.
Today, Lookout Mountain is a National Park and offers some history of the battle, great views of the surroundings, and a lot of hiking trails that will make you sweat up a storm. We visited here to finish the story of the Chatanooga/Chickamauga Battle. It was here that I thought I would become a widower in a matter of seconds.
Years ago, I had heart surgery and one of the side effects of this life-saving, life-altering procedure was vertigo. This dizzying condition can be annoying at times. I have it well managed and it plays little effect on my life now, but can be triggered by certain conditions, like freezing to death in a campground while sleeping on an air mattress. While we were climbing down what is literally a mountain to see various views and see important historic sites, I felt unbalanced and wobbly.
Charlene, on the other hand, was a crazed daredevil. She was enjoying the sights and the rock formations. She even would climb a few and insist on me joining her. I did comply to some degree but only enough to be on the rock, and not where I was at the edge simply because being so high up and having a slightly wonky feel, I was not risking a frightful fall for a slightly better view.
We reached a museum that is oddly located at the side of Lookout Mountain. Here is a large viewing area and a thick stone wall that protects viewers from falling over the side and plunging to their deaths. Charlene sits on the wall, which is invitingly large enough to do, and insists on me joining her. I refuse. My uneasy feeling is too much for me to feel safe, even on this wall which is thick and sturdy.
I do have to admit a potentially embarrassing thing about me. I think about The Simpsons a lot. Maybe a little too much. Here I am in a near panic that my wife is doing something that is inherently dangerous and using all of her strength to pull me towards her, yet I am thinking of the time Homer stopped Bart from jumping the Springfield Gorge.
Charlene had grabbed my arm. She was trying with all of her might to pull me forward. I was resisting and telling her to stop. Although I was deep in the thought of the hilarity of Homer falling down the Gorge, I was also well aware of Newtonian physics at play in this situation and was trying my best to stop my wife from falling over the edge. She did not realize just how dangerous her actions were and the intense fear I had if she had lost her grip, or God forbid, I lost my grip on her.
I was panicking and she saw it. She was not impressed with me at all. I could not express to her what I was seeing happening in my head as a comedy skit, and also the real knowledge of what could potentially happen if either one of us had let go of the other.
All things settled, I took this picture. We would continue to explore the easier portions of Lookout Mountain and were seriously tempted to journey down the mountain. The problem with going down is going up. We returned to the car. I was happy I was still married to my wife who had not fallen to her death on Lookout Mountain, and Charlene had enjoyed where we were, the views, the history and hopefully, the person holding her hand.
- See All The Places We Have Been map to find the locations featured in this article.
- See pictures from 2025 that I have taken which will include this trip.
- To see all of our travel pics, visit here.
