Iron Man Portage: Part II

Tuesday:

The next morning, after breakfast, we had a few minutes to ourselves before we broke camp and canoed to the next island. I sat on a rock overlooking the lake. During the night, fog had rolled into the cove, surrounding the island, covering it in an otherworld of quiet isolation. The tendrils curled and smoked, retreating as the sun burned through and I wondered if I would capture this moment again, writing in my journal, breathing, with rested, sore muscles and a filled stomach. We were so far away from everything, and I liked it. Here was a different world, wilder, more raw, more beautiful, and it was hard not to see the fingerprints of God everywhere we looked. The quiet peacefulness sank in deep in these moments, and I think we could all feel something coming loose, unraveling, unknotting itself, and we began to laugh more, smile more, at least in the moments when we had just woken up from a night of sleep, or stopped in the middle of the day to eat something from our packs.

But back to the day itself, Tuesday. We started late that morning, but after a couple hours came to another island with a fourteen foot cliff. We stripped off our clothes and put on swimming trunks and got ready for the jump. Tim and Don had been here before, and had jumped several times, but had never found out the depth of the water. Tim climbed the boulder first and stood at the edge and got ready to jump, but then kept standing there.
“Go ahead,” I said, “jump!”

“The water’s too cold,” he said. I asked him if he was afraid. He said no, he just didn’t like cold water. But I think he was afraid. After some time, Tim stepped back and Don stepped up, took a few deep breaths, then jumped out, flew through the air, splashed and went under, then resurfaced, his hair clinging to his face, his beard dripping water. The “old man” had shown us up.

I had jumped into deep water before, but never from this height. From the diving boards in swimming pools, you could always see the bottom, always knew what was coming. Usually there wasn’t long to wait after you sailed off the board. Jump, splash. Jump, splash. Off the high boards it might be jump, one, splash. But here it was an act of faith to run off the boulder high above the lake’s black depths, soar out into nothingness, and count “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 . . .” enough time to reconsider your decision before the icy waters closed over your head.

The water was a black hole, revealing nothing of what was underneath the surface. From where we stood from above there were moments where the diver would disappear, then the rest of us would wait, and inevitably the body in the water came to the surface a few seconds later. But when I jumped, after the moments of doubt, mixed with fear and exhilaration, my body would impact, and I’d plunge down. I felt gallons of water close over my head. I never tried to open my eyes, I think it would have been useless, but I quickly started kicking, trying to stop my descent into this unknown place, pushing as much water past me as fast as I could until my head resurfaced and I found air. We never knew just how deep the water went, none of us touched bottom, or saw what was beneath. It may have been better not to know. I guess that’s faith.

We jumped a few times, trying to see how many words we could say before we hit the water. Don tried it first, yelling “Jesus saves.” We didn’t know if he was trying to be funny or calling out for help. I couldn’t think of anything better to say, so I yelled out “Spider-maaaaaaan” as long as I could until I hit water. Tim, however, had us all beat. He got out the sentence “I just want to be friends!” with time to spare. He was still getting over his ex-girlfriend stalking him.

When I jumped, I’d feel the rush of adrenaline blocking out everything around me. I didn’t notice the look of concern on Tim’s and Don’s faces. “You might want to jump out farther next time,” Don said quietly. Tim agreed. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but tried to run and jump farther out the second time. It wasn’t until the third time I jumped that I realized what they were talking about. As I jumped I turned my head and saw the rocks six inches from me before the water closed over me. I realized then I was done.