In 2017 my mom and I took a week long trip to Iceland. It was amazing, 10/10, will go again.

However, we went on this hike up into the mountains to find this hot spring river. About halfway there I see this outcropping from the trail that overlooks the gully below. I hand my mom my phone and tell her I'm going to walk out there and to snap a picture of me. So I head out there and its cool. Not narrow or seemingly dangerous in anyway.

As I'm standing out there, a wind kicks up out of nowhere. Picks me up off the trail, feet and all. Like, I was literally weightless. It was just for a few seconds, only a few cm off the ground, but I knew it would carry me over the edge and into the gully below, and I couldn't do anything.

Instead, it set me back on my feet and was gone as soon as it came. I walked back to my mom and thanked her and said nothing about what just happened, I didn't want to scare her. But I stuck to the main trail after that.

I can't really explain how unnerving it is to be weightless like that on earth, where gravity is king. I became immediately helpless. If that wind had lasted longer, I could have easily been flung over the edge without being able to do anything about it.