Out in the World

I’m facedown, cradled in a harness sleeve, hands holding onto shoulder straps, feet pressed against a white, plastic bar to keep my body in a horizontal line. As the winch winds me up and upward, twenty feet, thirty, fifty, seventy, from somewhere in my gut a strong desire for survival sends me an SOS message and makes me think, “Maybe this is a bad idea. Is it too late to abort?” 

But I don’t shout down to the two staff members below to unhoist me.  

Eighty feet. 

Is it too late to stop this?

From below, one of the staff shouts, “Three, two, one, fly!” 

No more time to think, I pull the rip cord and drop.

A shriek escapes me and then as I swing out over the Royal Gorge, I let out a whoop.

Pendulum swinging back and forth, over the open mouth of the canyon, over the ride’s platform, back and forth. I try to take in the views, try to remember the terror that turned into thrill with that free fall. It all goes to memory so quickly.

It must be the terror that makes me feel alive. The toeing of the line between safe and unsafe. The testing of what I can make myself do. How far will I go? How high? The exhilaration of doing a frightening thing, of not aborting. The thrill of having done something scary and survived it.

“Next time back, grab the loop,” one of the staff calls up to me, holding a long handle with a rubber loop at the end which reminds me of a snake catcher.

As I oscillate one final time over the canyon, I loosen my fingers and prepare to reach for the loop. “Grab it and don’t let go,” I’d been told. Coming in, I grab hold, the staff member plants her feet against the pull, and between our combined effort I’m brought to a stop. They wheel the metal platform underneath me.

“You can take your feet off the bar and stand up,” one of the staff says, and so I do. They unhook the cables from the sleeve and I go, grinning, down the platform steps. 

Adventure (or is it the end of an adventure?) puts a smile on my face.

“How was it?” a third staff member asks.

“Exhilarating,” I say.

The staff member inside the Skycoaster hut helps me out of the sleeve and I go toward the exit desk to look through the pictures taken while I flew.

It’s strange to be out among the world again. It’s like being brought to waking life after having been in hibernation for a year-long winter. And while that hibernation was full of good things, it’s nice to move around, to stand in front of yet another of the friendly staffers while he tells me all the local must-see areas, pulls out his phone to show me videos, and prints off a photo of me suspended in the open air as an unasked-for gift.

Out again in the world, where I can go in search of views, walk among the rocks or trees, dream of distant mountains, and fly high above canyon rivers.

Unharnessed now and out in the world to fly.