On Sat, 1 Jun 2002, John Callan wrote:

> Oh yeah...having once been paralized by fear on a roof edge...is it
> certain that it will happen again?  Could it have been a one time
> thing?  I seem to have developed a fear of heights...but I still want to
> be up there to see for myself.

As a psychologist's spouse, literate in psychobabble, and as a fellow
fearer of heights, I can't help but comment on this.

Fear of heights is a psychological condition, and it can increase or
decrease over time for reasons seemingly unrelated.  My own fear of
heights is still with me, but it has lessened tremendously over time.

My wife the psychologist says that this fear comes from lack of trust in
your own impulse control.  At some level, you're afraid of yielding to the
temptation to jump or fall off.

The most dramatic illustration of this in my experience is the bridge over
the Fall Creek gorge on the Cornell University campus, just northeast of
Sibley Hall (near Rand Hall, if they haven't torn it down yet).  At the
time I was at Cornell, this bridge presented a challenge to heights
fearers in several ways.  First of all, the bridge itself (a modern, 1960s
type structure) was in terrible condition, with holes in the bridge deck,
and the railings along the edges were low.  Second, the bridge was not
flat, because the approach on one side of the gorge was at a different
level than on the other side; there was also a sharp turn coming into the
south end of the bridge.  Third, the bridge carried a tremendous amount of
vehicle traffic, and it shook as buses and trucks passed over it.

But the big problem was that the bridge was on the edge of an amazing
abyss of space, at least two hundred feet high, roughly circular, enclosed
almost all around with rock cliffs.  Some of my fellow Cornell
preservation students commented that this three-dimensional space seemed
to draw you toward itself, a scary feeling considering you were standing
on a sloping (and occasionally vibrating) precipice.  Others -- perhaps
those who were less uneasy about heights -- had no sense of this.

Paralyzed by fear at a roof edge?  I've been there.  There was something
truly horrific in being that close to a familiar big cornice for the first
time, not because of the cornice, but because I was only used to seeing it
from the ground.  A sight like that disrupts one's methodical,
don't-look-down everything-is-fine concentration.

I have walked over some of the very big and very high international
bridges between Michigan and Ontario (not as a goal, but I was
hitchhiking, and nobody wants to take a hitchhiker through customs).  The
Blue Water Bridge crosses the St. Clair River from Port Huron to Sarnia,
right at the outlet of Lake Huron, more than 150 feet high to allow for
huge freighters to pass underneath.

It's pretty windy up there, but I did fine.  The only slightly bad moment
was when I got over to the Canadian side, and coming down the long, long
descent, where you can look down into backyards and alleys and the roofs
of buildings.  What got to me, in my stomach a little, was seeing, way,
way down there, the dust (or piles of dried sap) on the flat tops of
wooden telephone poles.

It had never occurred to me to wonder what the top of a telephone pole
looked like.

                               Larry

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