Petrified Air: An Old Mountaineer's Story

[H]

Capt_Cronic posted the rule, When in doubt, hold on to your altitude. No one has ever collided with the sky (there have, however, been in-air collisions with other aircraft). That reminded me of a story by one of the old pioneers of the American west. Now, understand that these "mountain men" told these true stories very seriously and chuckling or laughing at the telling was quite an offense. I've forgotten which mountain man told this story but, when asked what happened to his horse, he said that it fell over the edge of a nearby bluff. Of course, the questioner wanted to know how that happened:
"Well, we were travelling up this steep slope quite a ways west of here. Suddenly we became aware that everything was exceeding still -- nothing was moving; well, sure enough, trees and shrubs were like stone. We continued up the hill and even saw a couple rabbits, stone solid... quite petrified. We didn't know but we were close to the top; we turned around a large petrified tree and didn't have time to stop fast enough -- there was a cliff and I didn't get my horse stopped until he'd already stepped right out over the chasm. To our amazement, we were standing in mid-air -- the air was petrified, too!"
The mountaineer hesitated and his questioner asked, "Well, what does that have to do with what happened here?"
"Well," the mountaineer continued, "When we got back here, there were a number of fillies about and, of course, my horse wanted them to know what a knowledgable young stud he was. The dang fool ran right out over that cliff over there -- you should have seen the look on his face when he found the air wasn't petrified there, too."

[Hawkeye07]

I think this one just got a cold cat. Ha-Ha!

[H]

What I'm not sure of was the prelude to his telling it, which seems to have been with somewhat younger male listeners. He may well have been alluding to their dispositions in (dis)respect to his horse.