SPEAK
A LESSON IN LEAPING
How I learned the value of risk. by Jason Shaad
GREG GRIESENAUER
It's a little after midnight. I'm 18 and watching my 11-year-old brother lean over the edge of the 30-foot Lewis Street bridge in downtown Wichita. He's wearing only boxer shorts.
"Just do it. Jump already," I say.
He grips the metal rail tightly and gives me a fearful smile. Then he lets go and falls toward the Arkansas River below. My friends and I rush to the railing and peer into the shadows. After a second we hear the splash.
Then we wait.
The water below is dark and muddy, Even in the daylight it would be too murky for us to see anything below the surface. At night, it's nothing more than a cape of black that occasionally reflects the moonlight or nearby street lamps. My two best friends and two of my other brothers listen with anticipation. I begin to worry, wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do if my brother doesn't come up.
Suddenly, I hear splashing and see my brother's muted-blue silhouette break the surface and swim toward the shore like an over-sized river rat. We all let out a congratulatory yell, and within seconds we hop the guard rail and catapult ourselves into the darkness below.
My heart leaps as I fall from solid ground and whisk through the air. I flail my arms for balance as the water rises to meet me. Almost instantly I'm immersed in cool muddy water. Everything goes completely dark and silent. For a moment I'm suspended in nothingness. Then my mind clicks and I kick toward the surface.
Air rushes into my lungs and sound floods my ears. To my right and left, other heads break the surface and gasp for air. Then everyone is laughing and yelling and splashing toward the east bank, where my youngest brother is shivering triumphantly.
In retrospect, I feel a little guilty for letting my prepubescent brother hurl himself off a 30-foot bridge into a muddy river. But I don't think I could have stopped him. Bridge jumping, after all, is an unofficial rite of passage in my family.
Some fathers recognize their sons' ascension to adolescence with man-to-man talks or the keys to a car. My father took his sons leaping off bridges.
I was 13 when I got the invitation. One Sunday afternoon, Dad asked if I wanted to drive downtown and go bridge jumping. As odd as it sounded, I nodded in eager acceptance. I had always admired my dad's stories about summers spent leaping off the family house boat at the Lake of the Ozarks. Bridge jumping was a chance to create
my own story.
We drove through the summer heat past Riverside Park to Murdock Street, where a narrow concrete bridge crosses about 25 feet above the Little Arkansas River. Fear and excitement burned in my stomach as we parked the car and walked silently in T-shirts and swim trunks towards the bridge. I stopped at what looked like a good place to jump. But as I waited, my dad walked past me and down a concrete stairwell at the end of the bridge.
At the riverbank, he told me the most important preparation for bridge jumping was measuring the water's depth. You always had to swim in to make sure you weren't going to land in three feet of water and break your legs. Bridge jumping was a risk, he said. To make that risk worthwhile, you had to know what you were jumping into. Look before you leap.
"Come on," was all he said, "we've got to test the water first."
We stripped down to our swimsuit
and waded into the warm, cloudy water. The river bottom near the shore was a combination of mud, rocks and sticks. When my leg brushed past a tree limb I freaked out and screamed like a girl. How was I going to jump off a bridge if I was too scared to wade in the water?
I swam toward the middle of the river. In the shadows of the bridge my dad exhaled and sunk himself straight down, trying to touch bottom and find the deepest spot. After a few minutes we found a channel about 10-feet deep — deep enough, he said. I nodded nervously, looking up at the bridge to mark the spot.
Back on the bank we climbed the concrete stairs and walked to the middle of the bridge. We waited for a few cars to pass and then quickly jumped. I was so scared that all I remember was thinking "Oh shit," and then I was frantically swimming to shore so I could run up and jump again. I was hooked.
Since that day, every bridge has become a potential launch pad. Every family road trip has focused on finding deep water and high vantage points. Almost any structure that spans water gets evaluated. Everyone — my four brothers, my dad, my stepmom, and even our dog — has adopted bridge jumping as a family outing. I've leapt off sea cliffs in Washington, canyon walls in Colorado, waterfalls in southeast Kansas, Utah and Oregon, and five bridges in downtown Wichita.
Never have I jumped without testing the water first. For as many places as I've jumped, there are twice as many that I've begrudgingly left behind because the water was too shallow.
It's this idea of calculated risk that I think my father wanted to convey when he invited me to leap off the Murdock Street bridge eight years ago. I haven't faced the greatest risks in my life yet. But when I do, my father's advice will help me make the leap.
05.11.2006 JAYPLAY
←15