~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Got a bucket list? I didn’t know I had one until the first time I heard the phrase, and since then I’ve filled a lot of buckets. The lists are all similar: go someplace. Katmandu. Great Wall. Every presidential library. Traveltraveltravel.
Had I ever said I’d like to do a zip line? No. Not on any list. I was unaware of the term until about five years ago, and it wasn’t that appealing a prospect. I heard of the plan for a zip line on a farm near Rippey — never implemented – and although I grasped the point of zipping from one place to another in the air, hanging on to something vague and unclear, I figured it was for 10-year-olds.
My friend who is 73 said she wanted to do the big time version, not between two poles beside a cornfield in Iowa but the 13-stop zipline in the jungle of Central America. She would only do it if I went with her. “I won’t make you go on the Tarzan Swing,” she said. So I said, “Sure!”
When I got up there on that platform three flights of stairs off the ground, I was questioning my life-long propensity to say yes before I considered the ramifications (“Sure, let’s sneak into the pool!” “Sure, I’ll climb in that window with you!” And so forth.)
The scene was spectacular – the mountain rainforest of Costa Rica on a balmy, windless April morning; graceful, airy mahogany trees; friendly teenaged kids hooking me up (hooking me up! Yikes! What if the hook-thing malfunctioned?) – my heart was beating way too fast. Had they ever had a zipping heart-attack case who died on the zip and whose lifeless body banged into the next tree?
Two pretty young girls buckled me into a complicated harness that I thought similar to what I’d seen in movies on parachuters. I had never put parachuting on my bucket list, either, because the odds seemed against me of being that high up and hoping to land on the ground without killing myself. And here I was, about to be nudged off a high platform to glide along a rope (that had been strung in the jungle heat for how long?) to the next platform high in the forest canopy, my only connection to the rope a portable pulley hooked to a widget on my harness.
I could not see the next platform through the trees. It didn’t bear thinking about.
None of this was comforting, let alone alluring. I said “Sure” to this? Age does not bring wisdom to everyone. How many people chickened out as they stood on the edge of the platform? I was next in line, which meant I still had time to flee.
But, I’m as good at never backing out of stupid decisions as I am in making the decision in the first place. I was now at the edge. A smiling and very cute youngster talked to his compatriot while snapping me in, paying no attention to his job. He said a couple of things – “ . . . feet tucked. . . .” “. . . catch you.” And with gentle pressure at my waist, pushed me off the edge into the abyss.
Once I opened my eyes and started breathing again, I discovered a weightlessness that was oddly like swimming underwater. I was gliding smoothly and comfortably over and through treetops, I was feeling joy. I had always been a tree lover, climbing all trees as a kid, wanting still to live in a tree. I did not look down. Or sideways. It was magic.
Too soon – within seconds — I lost the joy, because I became pretty intent on what lay ahead. Just how badly would I get hurt when I hit the looming platform?
A kid caught me, unhooked my pulley, led me around the tree to the other side of the platform, hooked me back up and sent me off. No time to think, to protest, to look for the ladder to the ground.
But . . . now, ah, life was good. Perhaps sublime. I had mastered fear and was flying high. I soared, it made me laugh; I looked to the side and there was the blue, blue Caribbean; I looked down and there a hundred feet below me was the forest floor.
Once, I did not have enough speed, and I stopped mid-zip. I had to turn my body around in my harness and grab the rope and hand-over-hand myself to the platform, where other hands hauled me in. That was a little nervy, but if I didn’t move along, the next zipper would run into me. I did it. And felt like I’d conquered the world. I was Zena, Jungle Queen.
Soon I was turning in my harness, watching for birds and critters, eager for glimpses of the sea, astounded that I was so high above everything and still within the treetops, alone, free, swinging in space . . . strangely safe. Maybe I will build a treehouse when I get home.
Too soon, the 13th platform was in sight – end of the zip road.
I’d do it again. Anytime. Anywhere. Especially in Rippey.
