Whispers of a Powerless Grave
Wires. Six minutes. Off-cam moments, especially dramatically movie-like ones, are often difficult to believe, but this one actually happened and I can vividly recall my life flashing through my eyes.
”What a beautiful grave,” he said, hanging on a wire, looking down a steep unsurvivable mountain with sharply-pointed trees. I was in the same cable car with this stranger and a couple more others. We had a full 360-degree view of Vietnam’s heavens, with our life relying on this architectural wonder made of glass and wires that transit people from point A to B, powered by electricity.
Somehow, more than 30 seconds and we’re still powerless, literally and figuratively. Sixty seconds, and I’m starting to wonder, whether I have lived a good life.
Exactly falling on the day of my 24th birthday, I am stranded up high in a cable car going to the famous golden hands bridge called “Ba Na Hills” in Da Nang, Vietnam.
During these moments, it didn’t matter how much there was in my bank account, it didn’t matter that I upset my bosses at work during that week because of a work-related mistake, it didn’t matter how I was totally out of shape by being heavier by 10KG from my peak fitness levels, all that mattered was to get out of there alive.
This makes for a perfect “content” for “influencers” but I have long gave up on the fame game and my hands were too sweaty and too shaky to even open up my camera and film whatever was happening.
A few minutes have passed and we heard an announcement in about four languages. For the first time, I finally understood what was happening. They announced that the cable car was switching power supply, and that we should just wait for a few minutes.
I was still frozen, not because of how cold Vietnam’s mountains were. “Few minutes” felt hours.
Maybe I should start problem-solving, I always pride myself for being a problem-solver. But maybe, this time, like the wires, I’m powerless. I knew that the entire cable car stretches for 5.8 kilometers and we’re still probably midway through the 30-minute journey going up. Helicopters might be too expensive to rescue us, but crawling through wires all the way down might be too dangerous.
Imagine questioning your life decisions for more than 5 minutes, with no certainty if you’ll even come out of this foreign country alive. Emergency contacts of friends and family are futile, they’re all one sea away.
Maybe we should just pull a rope down to reach the mountain and hike all the way down, it won’t hurt even if it would take us more than 24 hours. Or maybe we can just rot there for hours.
I have lived a good life.
But if living one more day means crawling through wires and risking it all, I’d gladly accept the challenge.
About six minutes in and we felt some movement. The hanging glass car is now finally moving upwards. I no longer have to wait for a helicopter nor crawl down the towering wires.
That was the longest six minutes of my life.