Tuesday, June 21, 2005

104. Whoosh

Later that afternoon I walked over to a clearing behind the cabin and contemplated the trapeze-like device touted when we first arrived at camp. It looked terrifying. You climbed way, way up a wooden ladder to a little platform about thirty feet high. You were strapped into a harness that looked just like the one from your childhood swing set. Then a large man attached one end of a big hook to your harness, and the other to a ridiculously thin wire that stretched across the wide expanse of ground to a tall pole many yards away. Before you could come to your senses, the large man shoved you off the platform and you whooshed back and forth between the two poles for an eternity. It was supposed to be fun.

Normally I'd laugh at such a scenario, but my mind was still much further aloft than where this thing would take me. The world was new and I was invincible. I climbed up the pole, strapped myself in, and went sailing through the air, screaming at the top of my lungs.

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