Natural Traveler

"Why am I here?" reverberates through my mind, as much as anything reverberates in Acapulco's sweltering afternoon sun after indulgence in the refried cornucopia of a Mexican buffet.

A broken elevator dictates I climb 50 meters of ladders within the bare-bones structure of a tower that resembles a massive construction crane. Each upward step makes Acapulco Bay a little more startling, the huge beach umbrellas more like toadstools, the sunbathers ever more like little Gumbies racing back from the waves.

I remember the respect taught me that morning as the waves knocked me over and the tide swept me out from the beach until I could swim to where boulders broke the riptide's power. High above, two men wait to tie me to a long cord and usher me off a narrow platform with the comforting words, "Don't look down." But, of course, I look down with every ladder rung, logging the heights. I had counted on the elevator to whisk me to the top with no time to rethink the impulse that had seized me. This was too much time to think.

I had drifted by the tower to escape a trade show filled with J-Lo look-alikes in fetching outfits pitching the latest offerings of Mexico, all working off the same list of superlatives like "sun-drenched." Now I am sun-drenched to the point of feeling lightheaded. I reflect on sweating shoulders that once pulled me up a gym rope like ratchet wrenches. Recently infused with cortisone shots to ease the impact of too many cold starts, my shoulders burn with each reach for the next rung. I reflect on the dues of age, of the onrush of a mid-century birthday that makes me Methuselah in a bungee realm frequented by young people not yet privy to the vagaries of chance.

Stories have been filmed of lives imagined in the moments before a scaffold opens. There is ample time to reflect.

Mostly, I reflect on fear.

When young and dumb, I tried to stare down a fear of heights by hanging from a Kansas water tower by a few fingers, before a wind gust told me not to press my luck.

As I scale the ladders, I yearn for that fear. It is simply defined.

Son Jack takes a ride.

It is not the fright that imprisoned my mind since a crescendo of seizures in my then 18-month-old son prompted a midnight ambulance. The CAT scan revealed the terrorist, a golf ball-sized tumor gobbling the left frontal lobe. Behind Jack's handsome face was a black hole that sucked in all the hopes and wishes people have for their children.

I am ashamed of that moment, when I gave my son up for lost, amid thoughts of how to raise organ donation issues with my wife.

Named for a great uncle who led the first patrol atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi, Jack seemed to have no chance to answer to his name. That night, each turn onto an empty hospital corridor brought a torrent of tears. After the mercies of a 45-minute sleep, the nightmare of despair rebuilt itself into my waking reality, but I had no tears left.

The surgical wizard at Children's National dared not cut far, for fear of paralysis or other permanent deficits. Part of the unpredictable tumor initially remained. Now we keep vigil with periodic MRIs. Every time they draw near, time holds its breath.

News is good. Defying odds, Jack's resilient body evicted the terrorist without chemotherapy, and post operation complications abated. He has some catch-up to do, some hoops to jump, but he makes remarkable gains as his young brain's plasticity allows him to rewire.

Day of the Dead "picnic."

Hope never wavers, but I never loosen my grasp on that subtle yet constant fear. It drives me up these ladders in search of a scare that I might embrace and overcome. I want fear to wash over me without reservation. I am weary of the effort of ignoring fear's taps on my shoulder.

As I climb onto the platform, fear does not disappoint. Every cell in my body is on high alert as an attendant ties my feet together with a towel and wraps it with a rope connected to a clamp on the end of the thick bungee cord that had been selected for my weight.

I could stand to drop some pounds and, as I stare out at Acapulco Bay, I am about to drop them all. The attendant hooks a backup harness around my waist with detached professionalism, like fastening a condemned man to a gurney.

This operation is run by the sister of the New Zealander who more or less invented bungee jumping, a guy who once slipped onto the Eiffel Tower for a clandestine jump. So she knows what she is doing, right?

Right?

That comforting thought has not rounded my cells, all of which are being forced to move toward the edge like sailors walking the plank. They frantically send chemical messages with the query "just what the hell do you think you're doing, mocking survival instincts?"

I light up with fear.

I angle for small talk: "You do this often?" The men don't indulge it. They know better than to let a stall get going on the gallows. Frankly, I am terrified. But I am more terrified of backing out - not of what the people I don't know guzzling beers on the deck of a bar below would think, but of what I might think while climbing down all those ladders.

The man hooking me up asks if I want a "water touch" - enough length to touch the water below - and whether I'm diving out far. Sure, on both counts - if I'm going out, I'm going out in style. He calculates and lengthens the bungee accordingly. I peer down at a small swimming pool below, six meters deep at ground zero, more cushion than the cliff divers who put Acapulco on the tourist map get.

The only steps I can take are small and comical, like Chaplin's Little Tramp or a medieval geisha.

The bungee cord is made of the same elastic that holds up underwear, only thousands of strands more. My thoughts turn to the pairs of boxer shorts back home in my dresser that won't stay up.

Mariachis perform.

The sage advice, "Don't look down," comes from behind. More little steps, to the edge. My heart seems audible in my ears as the Mexican buffet rumbles under the volcano. The slow-motion machine starts.

The executioner's firm hand against my back signals it is time.

Like a bullfrog goosed in a jumping contest, my legs turn from Jell-O to spring steel. I dive like Superman fleeing Kryptonite.

It's a better launch than my handler anticipated. Graceful, even. Few actually go out as far as they think, knees often going weak.

Suddenly, a small boy dives into the prohibited area where I'm heading for my water touch. My voice finds the word "whoa!" and I attempt a telekinetic slowdown as he swims off. Not to worry, I went out so far that even with the additional length, I was inches short of the water.

I could have used that stabilizing splash. Now the bungee really takes hold, turning a graceful power dive into soap on a rope. As what goes down must come up, what goes out must come back - in my case, up over a faux rock cliff at the other end of the pool and up over two lanes of traffic.

I look across at the roof of a building I'm flying at and then down at a bus below me. Mexico's ubiquitous Day of the Dead images pop up in my head, but the skeletal humor offers little comic relief.

The rope suddenly goes slack and starts to curl and loop. As I am again in free fall it occurs to me that this is a rope someone forgot to change after the 500-jump warranty expired, that the brief epilogue "freak accident" will now forever be linked to my name.

The loops snap taut, and I'm once again winging back past the pool toward the ocean. After a few diminishing recoils, I'm a mere pendulum swinging over the pool.

Note to the suicidal: Gravity rarely allows second thoughts.

On a platform a couple of stories over the pool, a young man reaches out with a long rod with a loop that I grasp. He pulls me in like a mackerel. Unfastened, my umbilical cord disappears like a sky hook. I am subject again to the laws of gravity.

Margaritas at the evening reception can't touch my still pumping adrenaline.

I relish my fear.

Afterthought: This bungee was safe enough, but I know life offers little in the way of comprehensive insurance. Writing in the middle of Washington, D.C., the quiet of predawn is often disturbed by an emergency vehicle. Sirens now kindle a different set of fears to manage, of flashbacks to nightmares insistent on remaining.

I wish I could recommend the bungee catharsis to those hearing echoes of sadness like 9/11, or imagining the rifle crack of a sniper whose mind lost its game, or shouldering a less notorious sense of loss, but it would fall short.