Legends of the Fall

Probably close to a dozen times this week, I’ve run into a friend or relative who says something like, “We’re just glad you made it back alive.” Some even reference prayer for my safety. I find an aura of relief and rounds of “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I just couldn’t jump out of a cable car.” I’ve heard people use words like “brave” to describe our adrenaline moments.
Even Crystal told me that she thought me more of a man for the precipices I conquered.
I’ve been a glutton to absorb all this, deferring most of it weakly. I really wanted to accomplish something in the way of respect from this trip—in addition to the personal adrenaline. Many of my new church friends are mountain climbers and white water rafters and parents. I wished for equality in those conversation circles. I yearned to experience some of the Wild at Heart fulfillment of who God made men to be. I needed more stories to tell in my “creative nonfiction” life.
But I don’t feel fully worthy of the word “courageous.”
In retrospect, I remember the thrill as much or maybe more than the fear. It probably seems easy now that we’ve done our stunts, now that we don’t want to repeat them only because it would take away from the virginity of the respective moments. The law of diminishing returns.
There was fear for some of the things like the Nevis bungy and the Shotover Canyon swing. But it’s mostly in your head and mostly well prior to the jump. In fact, the swing was only scary because the staff did play with your psyche—professional and comedic intimidation.
It’s the small things that make the build-up intimidating: the sway and glass floors of the bungy gondola, the windy gravel access roads cut into the cliffs, the other jumpers freezing on the ledge then suddenly disappearing. As each carabiner is secured on your harness, your heart rate rises in anticipation. But then there’s this instantaneous steeling, a readiness, a sense of welcome abandon. Part of it may be wanting to get your money’s worth. I didn’t pay $7,000 and fly halfway around the world to chicken out. Let’s do this!
So, that last large inhale proves as much from relief as from anticipation. I’ve talked about this moment, imagined it, wanted it. It’s larger than it really is.
And it’s here.
The first second of the bungy and of the first jump on the swing have clear audio but foggy video in my memory. The sensation of falling cannot be described. It’s a lot like the reversing drop of Magic Mountain’s Déja Vu and X rides but more ragged and loose. It’s funny, too: it’s only for the first part of the descent. You still feel the falling throughout the drop—the nearing river, the wind boxing your ears; but it’s like an inverted Willy Wonka elevator ride.
It’s not quite spiritual, not quite sexual—a freedom beyond words. It’s flying yet falling, cheating gravity of its malignant intent. It’s victory, a sweet [dry] taste in your mouth, a weightless brass set. You yell cathartically on the way down, ecstatically on the bounce and winch back to the platform.
It’s short, too short. And it doesn’t seem like 440 or 197 feet down—or the up-to-3 G’s advertised.
“How was it, mate?”
“That was frickin’ awesome! Wow! Woo! Man! Oh, Timmy! That was incredible. Wow.”
Such is not the retrospect of heroes and soldiers, parents and evangelists—a far cry from William Wallace’s “Freedom!” It’s not the stuff of Captain John Smith and Christopher Columbus. There are 30 patents on AJ Hackett’s Nevis bungy system; we stand as two of thousands to have Nevis’d, of tens of thousands to have bungy’d and canyon dived. Heck, we arrived in a bus. 90-some-year-old fogies have duplicated our “feats.”
But I’ll soak in the lore, the legend, the “Tell me everything; I want to hear the whole story!” I’ll bask in the glow of retrospect and well-timed photographs. I’ll keep the ease and simplicity to me and Timmy, the recollection to a grand story.
It’s not like you can call my bluff.