Civilized Life, Tree Tops, Regret, and Faith: An Exploration of Danger

Most readers saw a recent article exploring risk and danger generate over 30 comments in the past couple days. Many points were made; some good and some bad. For the most part, I kept out of it, and spent some time considering it all. Last night I couldn't sleep because hours before I had made my highest jump yet and was still too excited. So I wrote the following around 3am...



Jumping from towering trees into a rushing river requires a few things: composure, faith, and most importantly, a temporary suspension of belief in the certain reality of possible death. You discover a new relationship with your Nike’s after the second or third climb up, when the tree is dripping with water and the fragmented footholds are begging to be slipped from. Each finger becomes a precious tool, your pinky wedged into a few centimeters of bark from a tree born in the 19th century.

If you manage to make it to the thick limbs which jet from the tree top, you suddenly realize it’s your legs that have failed you. Looking down, you see sixty feet of open air, all that divides you between looming death and aquatic safety, but not before realizing your legs will not stop shaking. Suffice it to say, it’s one of the best feelings in the world. Sometimes, it’s only in being so close to death that you feel so alive.

Earlier I mentioned composure, the first of three necessities for rubbing shoulders with death. Your legs shake, but it’s a good thing. The adrenaline pulses through them, the bodies natural defense system working in overdrive. And the challenge transitions into the classic mind over matter realm. You exhale forcefully, and in the ephemeral, unlikely marriage of faith and stupidity, you simply jump and let gravity do what it’s been doing for billions of years.

Being sucked back to the ground at a rapidly increasing speed, your mind completely turned off, you search for composure. You pray for composure; keep the legs together, bend the knees, hands tucked at your sides. All terribly counterintuitive to the natural reaction: fling your arms up and kick your legs out wildly. Neither of which are good ideas unless you’re interested in bruised arms or your testicles ending up in your stomach. Open your legs too much and you’ll get a Blanco River enema.

It’s quiet a sight. But the sound, ah the sound, of it is perhaps the most interesting part. You can hear the sound of the human body, 170 pounds of flesh and bone hurtling towards the earth, slicing through the air, mixed with a primal sound of pain and excitement that can only be attributed to pain exiting the body.

Finally, there’s faith. Such a notion slips between the cracks of words, but it’s something you trust. And you have to put your trust into something. It’s the slow voice whispering just let go.

Mostly though, a jump from a towering tree into a rushing river is a symbol of return. The tree always stretches for the sky, the limbs push outwards to soak in sunlight. A rushing river inundates the roots, providing an essential element of life. Your ascent mirrors the trees stretching reach for life. When the limit of nature, or for some nerve, is reached, your plunge returns you to the element which offers vitality.

Resolution comes in those first few seconds after surfacing from river bottom. You break the surface gasping for air, alive in a way that simply can not be found in shopping malls, TV shows, academic success, or a promotion; in short, I feel danger is more readily found not in tree and mountain tops but rather in civilized life. It’s a feeling which, simply put, is not of this world; a testament to man’s uncanny desire for adventure, risk, and true life.

To be certain, the danger is high. Shaky limbs and legs form the thin, indelible line which separates you from fractured femurs, paralysis, death even. But it’s regret, which transcends that of physical pain and bodily harm, that is the real danger. Regret is similar to the slow voice of faith, but persistently whispers into defeated, tortured ears phrases like if only, would have, could have. A life not truly lived-that’s danger.