I have a great idea for completing this task! Climb to the highest point of your house. From there see what the highest place is that you can see. Figure out how you get to the highest point of that place. From there look for the highest place beyond that. Do this several times. Let's say five times, endeavoring to get to the highest point in your neighborhood or city.

This is not that completion.

I challenged myself to start looking for a series of highest points, from the highest known point, and playing out that iterative process. I hadn't counted on running into the snag I ran into when I started today: fear. Healthy, healthy fear! So my cool idea must lay fallow for someone to pick up, and you must be satisfied with this. About 11am this morning I took a break and instead of coffee, I stepped out the kids' bedroom window and hit our roof. I surveyed our filthy gutters with some consternation, and moved on to the steep grade of the main roof. Starting to climb, I was hit by a wave of pre-adrenaline. Woah, I'm scared! I got to the peak of the roof, just the highest point of my house, and I elected to be satisfied with this. Being scared like this is unusual for me. I credit this to being more in touch with my feelings than I used to be, and while it was kind of thrilling, it wasn't the kind of thrilling that I think is going to turn me into an adrenaline junky.

Maybe.

But I doubt it.

So I took some shots, explored the textures of my roof and the beauty of my back yard (black eyed susan patch in full bloom). My heart was racing the whole time and I felt pretty much every one of my thirty eight years. There's some beautiful things up there. The chimney and television aerial fascinate me. Looking down on the progress of our gardening and landscaping efforts is pleasant. And imagining getting rid of some of the pesky bits of trees is fun to do from up there. I soaked in the beautiful cool weather and put my face into the breeze. Eventually I found I was having a kind of fun, if not exactly a party. And decided after about ten or fifteen minutes of hanging out to just head down. This actually made it worse because on the way down I startled a spider who'd built a web in the eaves of our gable, and he leapt (or fell, but I believe he leapt. on purpose.) down onto the roof in front of me. I have pretty bad arachnophobia, and spiders in rapid motion are positively the worst thing in the world when my phobia is activated. In an already-heightened state, this was practically traumatizing. The whole incident might have distorted reality, but I'm pretty sure the spider was as big as my entire body. It blocked the easier way off the steep part of the roof! I had to slide down past it. It stayed mercifully, perfectly still, and I was able to photograph the bastard before returning to safety.

I love my house. I love the beautiful roof my wife and her dad put on it. And I love the fact that it's clean and dry. I don't feel like I need to go up there all that often, and today's adventure confirms it.