Zip Lining

Zip lining was among the optional activities planned for the guests at our friends’ birthday and 60^th anniversary party in Juneau, Alaska.  A dozen of us signed up, including the birthday girl.  Had she not done so, it’s doubtful that most of the rest of us would have agreed to go.  And had I known what was involved, I would probably not have had the nerve to participate.

Harnessed into a complicated set of straps and buckles, you ascend to a very tall platform that surrounds an even taller tree.  You are then buckled into a hook on the tree, and then – in our case -  a very pretty college student attaches your harness to two overhead wires, one above the other, which run from the platform on which you are standing to the next platform about several hundred yards away.   She then detaches you from the tree, asks you to sit down so that your harness supports your weight, and tells you to lift your feet, which propels you into space, over the trees in the forest below, over the streams and the waterfalls.  Your weight then carries you over the wires to the next platform, where a second college student catches you to prevent your colliding into the tree that stands in the middle of the platform.  You do this five times.

It’s perfectly safe, safer than crossing the street on a crosswalk when the light is in your favor.  The wires that support your weight can carry a load of thousands of pounds and you are hooked up to two overhead wires although one would be sufficient.  I knew it was safe.  Still, to lift up my feet, which I knew would propel me into the void, took more courage than I expected to have to summon.  I told myself that this was not a parachute jump nor was it a bungee jump.   Even so, I was far enough off the ground to be killed should I fall.  Yet I knew I wouldn’t fall, so my fear was entirely irrational.  But if Ina Gartenberg, the birthday girl, married for 60 years, could do it, and if my wife, only five years younger than I, could do it, so could I.  And so I did.  Five times.

It never became any easier.  I would have been glad to stop after the first one but once you’ve embarked on the circuit, there’s no way to confine yourself to one zip. Besides, chickening out would have required even more courage than lifting up my feet.  Zip lining is a bit like swimming in the Dead Sea, something that everyone should do once, but only once.  Just as I would not choose to swim again in the Dead Sea, I would not voluntarily go zip lining again.  Still, I’m glad I did it, glad for the spectacular views below of tree tops and waterfalls, and glad for the fact that at 80 I’m still able to dare.

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