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On the ledge

“It’s not the height,” I yelled. “It’s the cold water that I’m working up to.”

No one believed me. I didn’t believe myself. I had taken off my socks and shoes and wedged them into a cranny on the rock face. My bare feet curved around a textured bulge of granite jutting out over the clear blue water some fifteen feet below. Climbing up, I had decided that when I got up here, I would just go. Jump.

But, now that I was perched here looking, listening to my own breath, alternating my gaze between the landscape and the deep blue lake, something detained me.

Was it fear? Was it age urging caution? Or, perhaps a whisper from the universe for me to pause and appreciate not just the physical but the philosophical gravity of the moment.

The sun was not low in the sky but the shadows were growing. We had hiked only three miles to the site where we would sleep but it was a climb and we were glad to have the water for play. My wife and kids and 3 great friends were over at the beach near our tents. As far as we knew there were no other people at this pristine rocky paradise hidden in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I swept the horizon with my gaze. In all directions stunning beauty.

Nature’s Infinity Pool

The bald faces of granite created this bowl for a lake 6306 feet up in the sky. The far edge of the lake was sparsely dotted with the silhouettes of age-old evergreen trees leaping for the sky, behind them, the ground vanished. There was nothing but the thin air and the vast mountainous horizon far away across the valley floor.

Go

My heart beat a little faster. I stood up firmly on the sloping rock, my balance now could go either way. I had decided. The shrinking voice of fear drowned by the smile of the monster inside. Bending my knees slightly, I leaned out… my center of gravity now belonged to a point past the rock, out over the glorious water. Launch! 

For a moment, silence and then the air roared past my ears, the acceleration, the impending contact. I punched into the cold water, my smile almost causing me to lose the grip on my nose. The shock was electric. Air bubbles all around me, my hands cupped, I carved toward the surface for several seconds having forgotten how deep I would go. Up, and up I went kicking my legs like I thought I would leap from the water when I broke the plane.

Alive!

Now eye level with the lake and cleaning the water from my ears, I could hear my family cheering from the beach. I had been the last to jump. My validation overshadowed with raw joy.

It was good to be in the club but it was better to be in this company, in this magical place.