As a teenager, freshly licensed to drive, I drove my car - a skim-milk-white, '64 pushbutton Dodge, loaded with friends - to the top of Vancouver's Hollyburn Mountain for a Saturday of skiing.
Snow fell lightly as we made our way up the mountain road. No guard rails lined its icy hairpin curves - just an edge that dropped steeply into treetops.
The parking lot was full, and cars lined both sides of the road near the lodge. With a sinking feeling, I knew I'd need to use my substantially less than competent skill of parallel parking - on the drop-off side.
I found a space and pulled up alongside the parked car ahead. Recalling my driving classes, I pushed R, cranked the steering wheel and tapped the brakes, lining up the center of the back window with what I pretended was a curb.
Without warning, my brake pedal went as floppy as a spaniel's ear. My stomach followed suit when I realized that my friends and I were poised to plunge over the edge of Hollyburn mountain - rear end first.
God must have sent an angel to calm this rookie driver in that moment. I pulled the emergency brake, cranked the wheel, and managed to get into the spot before I went weak at the knees (and a few other places) with relief.
Then I remembered: What goes up must come down.
Late in the afternoon, after I'd found my friends rides back down the mountain, I finally reached my father. I waited for him sitting in my car, watching the other skiers leave the hill, their brake lights glowing until they disappeared in the fog of dark and snow.
By the time Dad arrived in his late-sixties model Pontiac sedan, my Dodge was the only car left on the side of the road.
Unable to remedy the brakes with brake fluid, he managed to turn the car around and park it on the cliff side behind his Pontiac. Getting out, he instructed me to get in - and follow him down the mountain.
"I'll be your brakes," he said."Put'er in second, and ride my bumper down. When you speed up, you'll bump me, and I'll keep you from going over the edge. And don't use the emergency brake."So that's how what went up came down. With no brakes, in the snow, on an icy mountain road, around hairpin curves, only a few feet away from the edge of the mountain. Bumping and jerking all the way, but safely restrained by Dad up ahead.
If I felt fear, I don't recall it. Dad had said, "You'll be just fine," and he'd never lied to me.
Dad taught me something that day - something far larger than my mountain mishap. He taught me that I'm always safest when I trust my Heavenly Father to take the lead.
What worked on that treacherous mountain road also works when faced with a new and untrodden year. Happy New Year... and ride God's bumper all the way.
