A story
The breeze is blowing on my face. It feels good, but it’s not what I want to be feeling right now. Right now sitting on the edge of this 420 foot cliff in Washington State, a moderate breeze is a bad thing. As I was hiking to the top I was hoping to find calm wind so I can step off the edge and make a BASE jump. Winds at the exit point indicate one thing: there are turbulent winds below that could cause my parachute to open toward the cliff and smash my body against the cold stone. Staring across the valley waiting for the wind to calm down and watching the fog drifting slowly by, my thoughts also drift off to another place and another time. .............................................
The year is 1998. It’s just after midnight and my legs are dangling over the side of a bridge girder 250 feet above the gravel lot below. I’m watching Dan Osman wrap static line around a metal beam. He’s building an anchor point to attach a rope to. I want to ask questions about what he’s doing but for some reason I just sit and watch his hands move. They move with a quick precision. No effort is wasted and no mistakes are made. The fingers make familiar movements clipping caribiners and tying knots as they’ve done many times before. Before long the anchor is assembled and the rope is in place. He looks over at where I’m sitting and smiles. I attempt to smile back but my lips won’t make the right shape. Fear. All that my mind can solidly grasp is fear. Hands tremble in my lap and the voice that comes from my mouth is shaky and unsure.
“Are you ready?” he asks me. I nod back since I don’t want to try to talk. What if he hears the fear in my voice, will he think I’m weak?
We walk together on the catwalk and approach the spot we’ll be jumping from. As I pull the climbing harness into place I fumble the buckle, my hands are really shaking now. He moves closer and finishes tying the knot in the 1” webbing that will connect the chest harness to the climbing harness. After the rope is properly attached to me, he gives me a final check and again smiles. I step onto a girder and carefully move one foot to the next one, legs spanning a gap with nothing but air below.
I take several deep breaths in hopes of calming myself, but deep down, I know better. No amount of deep breathing is going to tame the wild fear that has completely filled my world. My entire consciousness is fear. I’m so scared right now. I’m afraid that the fall will be scary. I’m afraid that the rope might break. I’m afraid that my body might slam into the ground so far below and my life will be forever extinguished.
I close my eyes and step into the darkness.
...........................................
Looking out over the valley I can see another bank of fog moving up the canyon, this time, in the opposite direction of the last one. The wind is definitely doing funny things down there. On my extended hand I can feel wind coming straight up
the wall. Not a good sign. That means that somewhere down there, the wind is hitting the cliff straight on. Not good for jumping. A familiar sensation begins to build in my core. Dread, impending doom, call it what you like. It’s the feeling that all practitioners of dangerous sports are intimately familiar with. It’s what we feel when we know we’re on dangerous ground and know we’re about to do something with potentially deadly results. Do we do it for fun? Is this my idea of fun, or is it something else, something deeper?
............................................
2004, Ramadi, Iraq. I’m standing next to a humvee waiting for a general to finish a meeting so we can escort him to another meeting in another city. We talk about stuff that doesn’t really matter. Food in the chow hall, the new female lieutenant working in the command center, cigarettes, whatever people talk about when they’re passing the time and pretending not to be scared. In the distance we hear several muffled pops that we’ve heard hundreds of times before. It’s the distinct sound of mortars being fired. We all run for cover, some of us caught in the open hit the ground knowing there’s no time to run. There are a few explosions a thousand meters away. One of the Marines walking by, a kid with orange hair, laughs at us for taking cover. My friend Joseph tells him to shut up.
“Why are you hiding? Those didn’t even land close.” The stranger asks, laughing.
“You know that now,” Joseph yells back, “Wait until they do come in on top of you and you’re standing up in the open.” He shakes his head and looks at me. I shake my head back. New guys. They’ll learn. They’ll learn or they’ll die.
Several more muffled pops. We take cover again. This time we hear something big cutting through the air. It vibrates as it flies over our heads and impacts with a ground shaking boom 40 meters away. The other mortars launched with it explode all around us.
“Stay down!” someone yells. More pops. Shit, more mortars. How many are they going to launch? The rounds come in again shaking the ground and raining dirt and gravel on our backs.
“Doc! Doc get over here we have wounded.” I grab my medical bag and run toward the voices pausing momentarily as several more mortars explode close by. I run as fast as my legs will carry me to a Marine laying face down in the dust. There’s blood everywhere. I roll him over onto his back to assess his wounds. It’s the orange haired kid. No way, his wounds are far too severe and he’s already gone. I move onto someone I can help.
After we get the wounded loaded onto helicopters we resume our conversations by the humvee and smoke cigarettes. After a while the General walks up, dirt on his chest. Obviously the General isn’t too good to hit the dirt when the mortars come in.
............................................
Rain drops. At first there’s only a couple here and there but they’re slowly gaining strength. What am I doing? Why do I repeatedly find myself in situations that can kill me? While I hope that the conditions will improve allowing me to jump with some degree of safety, there’s a part of me that wants to see the conditions get worse, taking the decision out of my hands. You would think that I’d have it out of my system by now. You’d think that what I saw in Iraq would have cured my thirst for danger. You’d think so… wouldn’t you?
In spite of all that, after over a decade of rock climbing, almost seven years of BASE jumping, and a summer in combat, you’d think I’d have it out of my system by now. Instead here I sit, alone on a cliff in the rain, waiting to jump off.
I’m not as reckless as I once was with this sport. There was a time several years ago when the current situation and the internal struggle wouldn’t be happening. I’d have accepted less ideal conditions and just jumped, caring less about the outcome. I’ve made some jumps in the past that probably should have killed me, but those were in darker days where I had much less to live for. Maybe it’s the girl I have waiting for me at home, nervous that I’m out making a jump that she couldn’t join me on. Maybe I feel that since I’ve made it this far I should take it easy and exercise more caution.
The rain is pouring down steadily now. I’m geared up and I look down the cliff. I look all around me at the world that goes unnoticed by so many. I close my eyes and feel the raindrops hitting my face. Maybe I should back off and walk down. Maybe I should take the guaranteed outcome and go home. I know I won’t live forever, but I’m sure happy to be alive right now. I wipe the water out of my short hair and pull my helmet on. A smart man would pack up and leave. Maybe I should too. You’d think so… wouldn’t you?
you write werry well
