This is where polio becomes a pain.

I’m in the depths of the Bryce Canyon pit. Getting down here was easy enough, of course, though there was a constant tension in my thighs as I fought to not tumble down the Navajo Loop path and bowl over everyone in front of me. But now I’m heading up again.

This is hell.

Just look around. Flaming red and orange hoodoos all around – figural, height-haughty, unmoved by misery. They irritate me. Now and again they are the tempters who drew me down here to suffer. Then they are just weirdly eroded rocks and I am a fool. Soon I’m not looking at them at all. I see only the gravelly path in front of me. Crunch and rise, crunch and rise, step by step. If my thighs were worried on the downhill slope, my haunches are despairing now.

Stop. Please stop.

I console myself with the observation that if I fall forward, I will not have to fall as far as I would on a flat surface. My shadow on the ever-rising path will leap up to meet me half way, and knock me on my forehead.

Then I wonder what would happen if I just dropped. Not over the edge, but somewhere along the way. To live forever in the pit of Bryce Canyon and become that legendary hermit who, one day, said “Not another step” and so became a ward of the National Park Service. Begging granola bars from passers-by, washing them down with those little reservoirs of Gatorade left at the bottom of their bottles.

But I’m with company who wouldn’t let me be left behind, so I continuously trudge upward. I’m not making a show of fortitude; I’m just too unimaginative to give up. Company laughs and takes my picture, telling me I am the most miserable thing he has ever seen. My right leg, the weaker one, wants to kick him, but doesn’t stand a chance. Heck, it barely stands at all.

Besides, I’ve figured out that stopping to do anything – rest, drink, breathe – is the worst thing to do. My legs only scream the louder when asked to climb upward once again. So I bend low, lean on my re-beloved alpenstock, and keep going. And going.

Hours later – or so it seems – I make it back to the top. There is no sense of triumph, only relief. And I feel bad, since Bryce’s toothy landscape really is spectacular, a favorite among many national park enthusiasts. It has been on my must-see list for years.

But I’ve learned a lesson: Just as I sit in the valleys of mountain parks and know I will never scale those 14,000-foot peaks above me, I now know I should sit on the edges of canyons and only admire – dangling below my damaged legs – those devilish depths.