Forgetting Fear

I went to Mt. Rainier today. Absolutely beautiful. I hadn't been there since I was a girl and I realized that its a huge mountain! haha A friend and I planned to go hiking, so as we enter the park the rangers tells us, "don't go past the 8mile mark unless you have chains. Snow is really coming down up there, so chains are required." We agree and then all of the sudden we're passing the 10th mile mark.... Then all of the sudden we're stuck on the opposite side of the road. We're not moving. Eventually a ranger comes, he asks if we were heading up or down because he notice we had no chains. We said heading up, he responded with "did you not see all the signs? Required chains for the past 2miles." He helped us out and got us heading down the mountain. We find a nice place around the 7mile mark and we park the car, and get our gear on. We head up this trail, over a beautiful creek that stayed along trail for the majority of the hike. It had about 50ft. on each side of it, so no one was going to get to it, but all the rocks were perfectly constructed by all the pounding water. Perfect steps and blue clear water.
We hike up about 1.5 miles of intense mountain in the 5 ft of snow. Of course there was a path that helped. haha. Once we got to about 1.5miles we decided that it'd be best if we start heading back. By now, I've taken my 2layer Columbia jacket off and I just have longjohns, jeans, boots 5 sizes to big in mens sizes and then I have under armour and a long sleeve and then a hoodie with some gloves. I look pretty unprepared to the average eye to be hiking in the mountains, a hoodie, jeans and HUGE boots. Anyways, we start heading down, moving off and on the path. Then I stopped on the path. There was a clearing through all the trees and bushes, about 25yrds long and 10yrds wide. I look at my friend, and then look back at all the free snow. Before he can say anything, I jump. I didn't just jump either. I flipped. From there I continued to flip, tumble and slide down this hill for the 25yrds. One of the funniest/fun things I've done. My friend's face was priceless! Pretty much an "OH MY GOSH, MY FRIEND IS SUICIDAL!" face. He continued to follow the path because he had the backpack with everything in it. But as we continued down the mountain, where ever there was an open spot, I jumped, slid, or did flips pretending to shoot stuff.
I was free though. I just let myself fall. I got to be a child for 1.5 miles. I had no idea what fear was for the whole trip down. It didn't matter if it was almost a cliff, I was flipping! I absolutely love snow!!