Lots and lots of happy dramatic license employed in this entry.  Oh, and header photo taken at the dinner I had with Jem the night before I stared down both the red guy and his pitchfork, and the robed one with a beard and a mighty forefinger.  Were we ever so young??

And that dinner was with a dear friend I dramatically reduce to pulp within this entry, but *triggger warning for Millennials and Gen Zed* is all tongue-in-cheek. As is tbis entire post. No friends were harmed during the writing of this blog entry.

Well, geez.  My last few posts have been somewhat maudlin, and they weren’t even prompted by drunken despair (in fact, I used to drink in order to mitigate my despair, or so I thought).  I’m a sensitive gal and life is full of slings and arrows, so it’s only fair that I occasionally feel fatigued, fed up, and flustered.  Also, this is my blog and I can write whatever I want and you’re reading it, so fa fa fa!

It can sometimes be tough for me to write the second or final parts of a story I’ve begun to tell, and this might be a result of either boredom with the topic or impatience to move on, but I’m going to finish what I started here.  It’s like when I start a streaming series that I enjoy, and I must follow through until the end; this doesn’t happen often, but the last one I watched which had me spellbound and eager to get through each episode was The Fall of the House of Usher.  It was so well-done, so well-acted, so beautifully shot and produced and written, I finished all eight riveting episodes over the course of three nights.  Highly recommended.  Also, it’s great to watch a series or a film and see immediately that it’s filmed in the Lower Mainland.  I know Vancouver and the surrounding areas so well, I can see a particular neighbourhood in a show and, within seconds, recognize its exclusive housing architecture (“That’s Coquitlam” or “For sure East Van”).  Nothing to really boast about, but watching Episode One and instantly recognizing the old John Casablancas Modelling School on Dunsmuir Street in the background of a shot gave me satisfaction.

I do appreciate the small pleasures in life.  I swear.  

…and ziplining is not a small pleasure, nor is it a big pleasure, nor is it a pleasure at all.  Let’s see if Aleksander Solzhenitsyn can help me out here:

In the dark closet made of wooden planks, there were hundreds, maybe even thousands of bedbugs, which had been allowed to multiply.  The guards removed the prisoner’s jacket or field shirt, and immediately the hungry bedbugs assaulted him, crawling onto him from the walls or falling off the ceiling.  At first he waged war with them strenuously, crushing them on his body and on the walls, suffocated by their stink.  But after several hours he weakened and let them drink his blood without a murmur.

-The Gulag Archipelago

No, ziplining is worse than that.  

When we last were in Costa Rica, my next-door housemate Jemima had cheerily suggested the Monteverde Canopy Tour.  Fifteen years after my life literally, perilously dangled above the earth’s surface as though clasped in the talons of a soaring vulture, I continue to clench my teeth and ball my fists and mentally howl at myself, going round and round my own head like a spinning top in a windstorm, wondering why I did not simply look this up online before agreeing to what would be the most frightful, depraved activity I have ever engaged in.  And this is a gal who flew from Germany to Pennsylvania to stay for two weeks with Legs McNeil.  

A canopy tour sounded redolent of pastoral poetry; I envisioned myself and Jemima laughing in delight as we gently accompanied the tropical breeze from a modest height, easily soaring above lush emerald treetops and rolling meadows of jade, creating memories that would satisfy us for lifetimes.  She had offered nothing in the way of details and explanations of what we had set out to do that weekend, and, seated next to her on the coach to the mountainous town, I had asked for nothing.  Like some Shakespearian fool about to disgrace herself in a most public and unimaginable fashion, I trusted my friend Jemima, and that Friday evening, after arriving at our destination, we went out for dinner and talked about our respective cities (hers: London.  Mine: Vancouver.  Just like the meal she ate that night, hers was vastly superior).  

A sound, sober, solid sleep would be just the thing before we had “an outdoorsy adventure,” as my friend referred to it.  And indeed, we slept in our hostel, breathing in the clean high-altitude air coming through the open window, such a luxury when compared to the acrid, unsettling fumes of San Jose.  

The next morning we took a cab to the Monteverde Canopy Tour.  Again, as though suddenly struck by a temporary case of Imbecility and Naivety (the two are kissing cousins), it did not occur to me to use the internet at our lodgings to research this excursion more deeply, nor ask the hosts about what we were about to embark on.  Coasting on the positive energy of being away from the capital city and surrounded by charm and fresh oxygen, I believed that this optimism and joy would be sustained by our bond with nature from a safe and comfortable height.

(There were many photos taken of this weekend, many of which are, sadly, lost.  The digital camera with which I took them broke years ago, and the Costa Rica photo album I posted onto my old, deleted Facebook account no longer exists.  Only a mere handful are still around now, thanks to being saved to an external drive I should have made more use of.  I mourn their loss, and still feel bitterly angry over the fact that, when trying to re-access that Facebook account a few years ago, I was told I needed to provide facial recognition or my passport information.  Since that was never, ever going to happen, my account appears to have been dissolved entirely.  Many of my pictures through the years have been lost thanks to the cloned “human” named Zuckerberg, whose eyes resemble Little Orphan Annie’s from the old comic strip.)  

The home base for the ziplining tour was nothing more than a charming wooden cabin surrounded by beautiful forest, and there was no outward sign of what was to await us.  I simply recall that Jemima was very excited, and I was truly just going along for the ride.  We were fitted into our harnesses and helmets, and joined a group of perhaps a dozen other tourists to begin our canopy tour.  About two or three handsome young Ticos served as our guides.

“Okay,” they told us before we ascended a simple platform perhaps a mere dozen feet above the ground, “this is your first zipline.  This will give you practice so you know how to brake with the glove, and get used to the feeling of flying.”  In retrospect, I wonder if they saw me standing there, guileless and eager, and recognized the look of a height-fearing simpleton about to literally soar into a living nightmare.  Why did they not take me aside and tell me to retreat, to escape, to wait for my much more courageous companion in the cabin and enjoy a perfectly lovely cup of local coffee instead?  Was my kind not easily-pinpointed by these high-flying experts?

The first zipline was nothing; barely suspended, really, and had I wanted to jump from the line, I would likely not have injured myself too severely.  The only challenge for me was assuming a sitting position with nothing except wide open space beneath my rear end, and wanting to impulsively slow myself down by grabbing the line overhead with my thick glove.  However, I made it to the other platform without issue, and the others did the same.

“What did you think?” asked Jemima, beaming with excitement and delight.

“It was fine!” I replied, and looking back, I wish I had taken that eagerness, that confidence, that assuredness, and somehow stored it into pockets of both the primal and rational portions of my brain, able to be accessed over the next two inhumane, unhuman hours.  

One of the guides said to us, “Everybody, just so you know…after the first three lines, you can’t go back.  You have to finish all of them.  So if you think you want to turn around, you only have two more lines to change your mind.”

It was as though he were a Latino oracle speaking directly to a future that I didn’t know was entirely in my hands to manipulate.  Rather than red-hot reason and foresight flooding my system like so much cortisol does in times of pure crisis, a foreign melange of conviction and self-consciousness overcame me: who would want to be the one to throw in the towel, put down their helmet, bid adieu to the others, admit without words that they were constructed of impenetrable cowardice?  Not your girl.  And she paid dearly in the form of psychological warfare and spiritual torment that would drive her to seek solace later that day–as it’s clear no death took place–in the form of street-vendor cotton floss and Willy Wonka candy.  

(I had been sober at the time for a month and a half, which was merrily annihilated not long afterwards upon getting an ultrasound and finding that my liver was entirely okay.  Common sense and intelligence have no residence in the twisted house of the alcohol-seeking brain.)

Nobody changed their mind; nobody turned around.  Everyone kept going, including a young lady around my age whose facial expression was beginning to register mild alarm and resentment.  The young man accompanying her seemed oblivious to her increasing discomfort.  I wondered what could be the matter, what was prompting her to feel such a degree of trepidation and uncertainty.  After all, our group had just accomplished our first zipline, a brief flash of an affair which I could reasonably see elementary-school children participating in without any degree of fear or intimidation.  As for myself?  I have been known to take flights in which I gulp down benzodiazepines with red wine, so petrified I am of being high up.  I’ve since flown without resorting to any sort of intoxicants, trusting that the statistic of approximately 100,000 flights daily around the world has resulted in almost no regular airplane crashes, but rest assured: if I am walking across a bridge in Vancouver, I try to do it as quickly as possible.

The next two ziplines were similar to the first; practice runs, really, although I did not know this at the time.  Their lengths were slightly longer, their heights were slightly higher, but they were entirely doable.  

And then the last gasp of opportunity, the open window of escape, the self-inflated life raft, all of it evaporated once the third zipline was completed by us all, and what remained was the hottest corner of hell where not only was I instructed to shovel sulfur for all eternity, but I would be denied the requisite tool and forced to use my bare, blistering hands while attempting to ignore a bleeding pterodactyl of the damned, one which shrieked in my face for the duration of my endless chore.  

One zipline after the next presented themselves, and each of them became successively longer, higher, more threatening, more thirsty for vulnerable, unthinking human flesh to dangle from their steel braids, knowing that all of us silly mortals were doing something against the laws of nature and self-preservation; that one simple unclipping or frayed cable wire would send any of us hurtling down to an earthly landing that any of us arguably deserved.

I began to feel panicked, trapped, and angry at my supposed friend for hauling me into this situation.  “Jesus, Jemima,” I muttered as we approached the fifth line, not sure why I was uttering the name of God’s alleged self-absorbed kid in conjunction with my Judas of a friend, “this is fucking awful.  I don’t know if I can do this.”

She kept flashing me her winning smile. “You don’t have a choice.  And it’s fun!  Don’t worry about it, it’s safe, man.”

And doctors used to tell people to smoke cigarettes for their health, MAN.  

“It’s your turn,” said one of the cute guides, gesturing to me.  The line was strung between two hillsides, with what looked like the ground approximately twenty thousand feet below us.  I’m sure it was “only” about two or three hundred, but I may as well have been staring into a Neitzschean abyss.  

Doing my best to stay calm on this next line, I was clipped on, and then began to slide.  The reality of what I was doing and how to best navigate it escaped me, and I involuntarily began to brake with my gloved hand.  Can you guess what the end result of this action was?  I came to a halt in the middle of the line, hanging there, dangling above the Earth’s crust several hundred feet above, with absolutely no way to walk, run, cycle, or drive my way from this situation.  If you can envision a Worst Case Scenario that outweighs this, I invite you to share it with me.  

I will repeat: I was hanging from a zipline, unmoving, hundreds of feet in the air, with a paralyzing fear of heights.  

*   *   *   *   *

I’m not sure if I screamed or hollered, but I know I didn’t cry.  I think I may have blocked this entire experience out after “I have just stopped moving on this zipline” smashed me in the face with all the subtlety of a cricket bat set aflame.  I do know that a guide made his way onto the line and helped me get to the other end; how he did this, I’ll never remember.  Did he zip down and swoop me up on his way?  Did he stop, attach himself to me, and somehow get us going again?  I don’t want to remember; attempting to do so renders me nauseous, as though Satan himself injected my entire being with blue-black bile that it desperately wants to eject.    

…and it didn’t end there.  It was line after line, or so it seemed that way, with our group of intrepid gringos willingly attaching themselves to cables strung high, high up in the air and whizzing across them.  After that first horrific debacle, I thought I was the only one who was having difficulty with this onerous, death-staring task, but the young woman I had noticed at the beginning of this three-hour tour (I would have gladly changed places with absolutely any of the Gilligan’s Island crowd) started to look more ravaged, more despairing.  Since my Benedict Arnold of a British friend was having the time of her life, I decided to approach this woman and see how she was doing.  

“How’s it going?”  I asked her.  “I hate this.  I can’t believe this.”

Instantly, tears began to well up in her eyes.  “Me neither.  This is the last thing I want to be doing.”

I noticed she had a trace of an accent I couldn’t place.  “Where are you from?”

“Belgium.  And I’m on my honeymoon.”  

I sent an instantaneous prayer of gratitude to the universe that this was not my reality.  Glancing over, I could see that her new husband was inhabiting the same mental space as Jemima, one of giddy rapture.  

 “Oh my God.  Are you afraid of heights, too?”

“Yes!”  she sniffled, and I felt for her.  But mostly, I was more concerned for my own sanity and life.  That’s how it goes when you’ve paid for an excursion in which death was a very strong possibility with every move you made (or didn’t make), and you could not do anything except cheat it the entire way.  

“Do you have any…Valium?”  I asked.

“No.”

“Ativan?”

“No.”

“Diazepam?”

“No.”

“Lorazepam?”

“No.”

“Zopiclone?”

“No.”

“Zolpidem?”

“No.”

“Seroquel?”

“No.”

Etc, etc.  It was hopeless.  She was a classy European lady who probably couldn’t even acquire any of those pills, and I was a somewhat-debauched North American who had made a decision to zipline across mountainsides, now seeking pharmaceutical numbing in order to endure this merciless exercise in self-inflicted torment.  

After a few more ziplines in which I somehow managed to just let go and let God (and do note all of my religious references throughout this post…when staring down The Reaper of your own free will, suddenly even the staunchest of vocal atheists will pray to the God we all secretly want to exist), there was a small zipline break, or “treat” awaiting us in the form of a Tarzan rope swing halfway through.  This involved all of us standing on a platform many feet above the ground, getting clipped to–you guessed it–a giant rope swing, basically getting pushed off the platform, and swinging in colossal arcs to the point where your toes almost touched the tropical treetops.  

It was like doubling over with a sudden bout of violent gastrointestinal distress in the middle of a heavily-crowded mall during the Christmas season, with all public restrooms closed for cleaning and your sudden, terrified recollection of consuming cauliflower bites coated in chili-pepper sauce the night before, except those cauliflower bites were actually barbed-wire coils and the chili-pepper sauce happened to be corrosive acid.  A crude simile, I admit, except there is no other way to describe the helplessness, horror, and physical loss of control that accompanied this Tarzan rope swing (yes, that’s what they called it).  The guides actually filmed each participant as they were shoved off the ledge and went soaring to the heavens while essentially being in an even deeper, more incendiary level of hell.

I have since lost that DVD, but I do recall grudgingly purchasing my own copy of my own rope-swing turn and watching it afterwards on my laptop; the bloodcurdling, horror-stricken scream of a willing victim of human-rights violations continues to haunt my daydreams and night terrors to this day.  

Jemima, meanwhile, was sort of giggling at my almost palpable loathing of this entire sordid experience, her adrenaline mounting with each stage.  The woman with whom I had only the day before, on our coach trip, shared deeply personal and private information about a mutual colleague I was having a shameful affair with, suddenly became a turncoat of the highest order, mocking my fragility and wordlessly gloating of her own titanium spine.  It almost became too much to bear.  I vowed to never again share with her my roasted beets with garlic and fresh thyme; never, ever to lend her a few thousand colons when she was short of money.  

Then we stared down the final zipline.  Now that, my friends and readers, was too much to bear.

It was over one kilometre from mountainside to mountainside, and the other end appeared to be invisible.  I had taken all I could take, and been as brave as I could be brave.  It was the only route back to the main office / cabin of the tour, and stumbling down the sky-high cliffside, stomping across the canyon, then climbing back up the other hill was quite obviously not an option. 

The Belgian girl looked at me with what appeared to now be revulsion.  Not towards me; towards her brand-spanky-new hubby, who was practically rubbing his hands together and giving her little elbows in the ribs which all but said, Isn’t this the best?  Aren’t you glad you married me?  Oh, mon Dieu, the way you’ll hump me tonight will say it all!  I hoped he had money, and there was no prenup, and that she took him to the cleaners as soon as they were back in Europe.  Or at least, I hoped he did couch duty for the next month after a few days in the doghouse, as this was no honeymoon.  This was three hours of staring into the barrel of a very loaded gun while being forced to listen to Eric Clapton through top-volume earbuds.  

One of our guides announced that this was also the “Superman” option; that is, instead of the usual sitting-on-thin-air position that everyone typically assumed, this particular extra-fee option (which, naturally, Jemima had indeed paid extra for) involved being clamped to the line so that you were facing the ground with your arms extended above your head, just like a superhero.  The idea of agreeing to this back at the office seemed silly; even though I had no idea of the elevation of the ziplines, why would I want to look at the ground I might very well splatter upon?  However, now armed with unshakeable knowledge and experience–while truly taking in the reality of this kilometre-long flight at heights that rivaled the Sputnik–it seemed to be an undertaking that, for its eager volunteers, would eventually result in lobotomization, electro-shock therapy, three steady meals of Thorazine, and a padded room with only a green crayon for company.  

The Belgian girl once again had tears in her eyes and faced me: “Last one.  I think I can do this.”

I shrugged, all fear and panic having left my body upon looking at this final fling.  If I had to sit myself upon a nearby rock for the remainder of the day and night, all by my lonesome, awaiting a helicopter to lift me back to safety and wellness, that’s what I was going to do.  Because I was not going to attempt over one kilometre of a zipline back to headquarters; not when it was this high, and not when I had already found myself hanging in the middle of a line due to unbridled fright.  

 “You can.  But I can’t.  I can’t do this,” I stated calmly.

Jemima grinned at me, the appearance which had now become an intolerable rictus of evil and cunning.  “You have to!”

“I don’t.  I can’t.  I’m not doing it.  I’ve had enough.”

“But Nadz–”

“I’m not.  What part of this do you not understand?”

Jemima approached one of the guides.  “My friend can’t do this one.  She’s scared.”  Normally that second phrase would send me into apoplexy–I am a tough broad–but there was no disputing it this time.  I was.  I was very, very scared.

He glanced at me, as casual as though he encountered this scenario all the time.  And apparently he did, because he said, “That’s no problem, she can go with me.”  

It would involve both of us being hooked to the line above, with me facing the cute young Latin American guide, straddling him very snugly and holding onto him as we soared peacefully above the treetops towards safety.  

Suddenly, it all seemed entirely reasonable.  

After Jemima insanely did her own journey posed like Superman, laughing the whole way until I couldn’t see or hear her anymore, I assumed my position atop the guide and we were off, with him enjoying the trip so much he actually leaned back and spread his own arms to the sides, while I clutched him tight and enjoyed the greatest kilometre of my life.

Dear reader, I lived.  And then I gorged myself ridiculous on convenience-store candy, eventually conking out thanks to a blood sugar spike and crash, and of course, over-the-counter sleeping pills from the farmacia.  

EPILOGUE:

Jemima continued to be one of my favourite people in the world. We have since lost touch, but her presence during my time in Costa Rica remains one of my fondest memories. Jem, if you ever somehow find this blog, you forever remain a rock-ass fellow Sag and a fearless comrade. ❤️