Crystal Duan is a West Coast-raised, Midwest-bred writer based in Los Angeles. She's been published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Indianapoils Star and Bustle. You can find her on Twitter @duancrys posting about politics, Pad Se Ew or Nickelback.
Forty minutes into a cable car ride up the side of the mountain, my eyelids were fluttering. My jet-lagged body couldn’t stay awake, even while I was suspended thousands of feet in the air above the lush landscape of the Swiss Alps. When we stopped, I blinked and glanced lazily out the window. The fog had parted, revealing cliffs with their large, majestic shapes poking out of the whiteness surrounding them. One loomed in front of me, while to my right, the space between them revealed a steep drop.