The Optimistic Traveller

I’ve always been a climber. Not socially – I mean, I like to climb physical objects, especially trees, regardless of whether or not I can come down easily from them. I have no fear of heights or of falling. Once I get to the top, if I must jump off into deep water, I get a little flutter before I leap, but it’s not fear, exactly. It might be the actual sensation of daring oneself, or what it feels like to move forward with intention. I’ve recently realized this semi-profundity: I’m most comfortable outside of my comfort zone.

In Santorini, I plunged from a yacht into icy deep waters in a cove. The only thing I feared was water getting up my nose, so I pinched it closed like a little girl, as I generally do on water slides. There’s nothing like water rumbling around in your sinus passages, seemingly in your brain, for days after a daredevil move, to ruin the joy of the jump, and I’ve learned that the hard way. When I hit the deep teal water, it was the cold of it that shocked me. Even returning from that trip atop the boat’s front deck, in the direct warmth of the sun, the wind whipped me raw, and my fat-deprived body convulsed uncontrollably. It was a bit like an orgasm that almost hurts.

I love water slides – the taller and faster, the better. I even like the kind where the floor drops out from under you and the unknown swallows your body whole.

In Dubai, I rode one of the world’s tallest water slides when I was three months pregnant with my son. Yes, I know. I wasn’t supposed to do that, but it felt right to me at the time. And I was incubating a little adventurer.

Before COVID, I was started to get to a proficient-in-some-ways level at trapeze artistry. Of the two “fly zones” I used in the New York City area, one was spectacularly high, but I had no problem with that, even after a face-plant or two in the very-taut, firm net. I had regular bruises and aches. To have taken that up in my late 40s somehow felt “me,” though it made the learning extra challenging, because physically I do think we become set in our ways. But just writing about it reminds me of the incredible experience. To fly on a trapeze is exhilarating; the inevitable fall never ceases to surprise because your body handles it differently every time, even if you’re a professional. The climb up and the twist down both utilize all the muscles in your body, but particularly in your core. Many people think climbing is about leg strength, and of course it’s that, too, but balancing and distributing your weight is even more important, and to do that you must be in tune with your entire body, especially its center.

I scaled a friend’s house because she was locked out and couldn’t afford a locksmith. She called me in a panic and unusual tears and was about to phone someone to change the locks, even though she was going through a divorce and dead broke. I immediately told her not to do it, and I was coming over. Within minutes, I was up two levels from the ground like a little chirping monkey. The top floor balcony had been left unlocked. Voila! Your key, madam!

In Jamaica at the Margaritaville in Montego Bay, I rode a water slide ride right into the ocean from the aloft bar, then swam out to a giant bobbing “iceberg” equipped with rock climbing nooks. Hoisting my full body up out of the water to climb onto the berg was almost unconquerable, like getting out of a pool with no ladder and only a smooth round ledge to grab onto, not even a spot to dump yourself if you manage the climb out. Not many people can lift their full body weight above their heads while attempting to stay afloat in deep water. After coasting down a river (also in Jamaica), I swung from a rope out into the swimming “hole,” a word that always bothers me a teensy bit.

I’ve jumped from the top of a waterfall in Cuba and from a high ledge on a river in Hawaii.

I’m not afraid of the fall, though perhaps sometimes of the impact, or what lies beneath. Is that universal? Surely people don’t normally fear that delicious anticipation that is the experience of falling, or jumping?

And another thing – you’re never too old to roll down a grassy hill, especially alongside a giggling child. Sure, you may bump into something at the bottom or veer off and hit a rock on the way down, but once you build up momentum, that slow-rolling fall is a definition of bliss.

I have been on a number of buoyed islands that some Caribbean beaches anchor to create an activity or another place for guests to sunbathe. Some, like the iceberg in Jamaica, have height and are difficult to negotiate upward onto; others might have rickety rope ladders that make it almost more difficult to climb up. Once, in the Bahamas, I managed to climb up only with a hand from a young woman tanning with her friend. A bit later we spied a shark circling and were temporarily stranded as the girls screamed, “Hell, no!” I was the one that jumped in first to swim ashore, where the lifeguard couldn’t have been more blasé about the shark sighting, even mentioning a name they’d given it, a regular visitor, apparently, to the vicinity.

I’ve climbed trees all over the world, most recently a type of conifer in Canada at the old property of Lucy Maude Montgomery, creator of Anne of Green Gables. I like to get as far up as possible and then just sit for a while in the branches imagining myself a bird or a flying squirrel. There’s a rustling up there that whispers of all the past things the tree has witnessed. Maybe my older-age daring will be communicated to those who climb after me.