March 29, 2004

On wobbly knees I leaned over the precipice and shouted, “What do you do when you’re on top of the world?”

A hundred feet beneath me the river billowed through the gorge with a deafening sound. I was alone on a giant crag overlooking Elora Gorge, where I climbed suicidally using my hands like talons to grip rocks and soft earth after my grappling hook reached its limit.

I moved closer to the edge and shouted louder, feeling blood and excitement rush through my limbs.

“Jump!” my visionary Indian friend shouted back, eager to see me plunging firma to the terra.

“Not today,” I whispered, and then stood up and took off my clothes, feeling incredibly free. There’s only one thing to do once you climb to top of the world — fly on wings of light before the glue comes unstuck from your feathers. High on a crag overlooking chasm I was naked and free, dancing in the light.

And then I climbed down again, arduously, using my friend’s shoulders as a landing spot. I was shaking with exhaustion and smiled wildly at Heather, my mouth tasting like death.

“It was better than reality TV,” she said, finding it hard to believe that I managed to break nothing in the process.

Once I calmed down, the three of us continued our rush through the forest, dancing over boulders and mud. I was running elegantly like some impossible animal, only stopping to let everyone catch up.

“You shall know our velocity,” I shouted at Heather, jumping towards the river. We passed through caves and stony rubbish, and only came to a stop when we couldn’t go any further.

The three of us sat down on a ledge by the river contemplating solitude. The Grand River frothed inches from our feet, but we felt sublimely at ease with the sun warming our bodies. I told them that you can’t fall off a mountain — Kerouac discovered that in desolation. And you can’t slide off a rock wall either, as I found earlier, not if you cling to it like mad.

The water looked muddy, tormented, and fascinating in its anger.

“How deep is it?” I wondered. In the spring the rapids swell and grow darker.

“Why don’t you jump in and find out.”

Five minutes later I was taking off my clothes, preparing to jump, when a father and his three children came out of the forest. They turned back when they saw they couldn’t get any further, and I took off my pants.

And there I stood naked on the river’s edge thinking about the plunge. Snow was still melting on the trails, and the water, which I tested before with my toe, was below the freezing mark. River rapids are cold even in the summer swelter, and now they felt like liquid ice.

As the sun warmed my chest, I tried to imagine the shock, the heart-attack, the limbs paralyzed by cold. I heard people sometimes go into shock and their bodies refuse to respond when plunged into freezing water. What would it be like, I wondered, not to be able to move in the middle of the river.

And then I leaped off the edge, body awake and violent, and arms furiously beating back the torrents. I felt the cold jump into my skin and I desperately reached for the shore. My friend’s hand grabbed mine and in a second I was out, shivering on the ledge. I grabbed my shirt, and as I dried my body I was profoundly aware of the entire expanse of my skin, myriads of thiny icicles jabbing my body.

“How was it?” Heather asked, snapping a picture.

It was incredible! As soon as my body touched the water I was alive and alert, my limbs perfectly under my control. My body was focused on one purpose alone, my mind untroubled by thoughts. That clarity of the plunge was exquisite, as was the icy sensation percolating through my body afterwards. Every corner of my nervous system was throbbing pleasantly.

We should all have a near-death experience weekly, twice weekly.

We left the gorge transformed, the afternoon sun playing in our hair.

Posted by Tudor at 12:12 PM in Here & There | TrackBack