It’s beautiful place. Is there danger here?

Down in the canyon I bathe in the hot sun on the edge of a deep black river that moves quietly past me. The beach is made of round gravel, with a patch of softer sand mounded along one edge. It’s bracketed by scrub grass and manzanita; iron rough and hardy, with peeling red bark under compact green leaves.

As I climb skyward, away from the black water I may loose my footing, loose gravel rolling over compact sandstone, like marbles on a table tilted slightly to the left. And plunge in a cloud of red dust into the river’s sucking oily depths.

Or my hand, stretching to find a hold to pull upon, high above my view, bothers the sleeping rattlesnake. Pricks of venom pierce the back of my hand where tender raised veins rush the toxins back towards my wildly beating heart. And once more I fall.

The danger could be my simple ignorance of the river’s power. Tempted by the delicious cool of that water, I wade out. All at once I am hit by the fast-moving undercurrent, slipping off the sandy shelf. My feet are unsupported, and I’m swept beyond away from the beach into a chasm with sheer stone sides.

But I’m not in danger.

I’m sitting on a quilt an Ikea daybed, in the sunshiny warmth my city centre flat. Through plastic headphones the Calm app is serving me a Southwest Canyon Soundscape, and there are no rattlesnakes or in fact venomous snakes of any kind on the British Isles.

I have always had a keen imagination for danger, though. I get the sense that I inherited from my father. Did he always possess this love of worst case scenarios, or was the tendency born the same day I was?