Henry came across the perfect swing quite by accident, on one of his first days out, while wandering the vast network of paths and trails up above campus. Deep in the redwoods, down off the trail several yards, it was a mere chance reflection that drew his eye. At first he nearly couldn’t believe his senses. There amid the soaring redwoods was a thin perfectly vertical rope. Anchored somewhere invisibly in the canopy at least a hundred feet above, its nadir culminated in a simple wooden disc, carved and sanded to provide a soft platform for any who dared try it.

And dare was the right word. Henry had had a fear of heights since that night in Manhattan, when his crazy drunken friend had cavorted atop the parapet wall on the roof of the eighty story building. Weird how the acts of another could trigger such primal fear, especially since he’d never been particularly bothered by heights before.

So when he came upon such an odd contraption in such an odd place (what kind of nutjob had climbed two hundred vertical feet, then another ten or twenty out on a limb just to place a swing in the perfect spot?) he was stunned for a moment, then began to laugh. It was just so odd. No way had any official body had anything to do with this, this was something else: quirk, dare, anarchist statement, art project? He knew the second he spied it he’d try it, but it still took a few minutes for him to work up the nerve. He clambered awkwardly down the steep slope, Converse Chuck Taylor’s slipping and sliding on the loose duff.

When he finally made his way down the steep slope to the swing he saw that its seat was at eye level, far too high to climb on to. He reached up,  grabbed it, and struggled back up the slope, until he could get it low enough to swing his leg over the seat. The rope was that fancy rope climbers used, dark, but with brightly colored flecks embedded in the weaving. It was smooth, and seemed impossibly thin. Henry had been called “Slim” for years by his buddies back East, but he figured that was because he was anything but. He was fully aware of the attraction of his overstuffed frame for the earth below, and paused for a moment to wonder just what sort of quality control had been exercised by whatever unkown parties had conceived and executed such a wonderfully loopy project. Maybe they were teeny tiny forest people, mere wisps of beings, and a lummox like himself would plunge headlong down the cliff before even half his weight was born by the gossamer threads. Or maybe the constructors weren’t whimsical artists at all,  but evil anarchists who felt that whatever fate befell a chunky guy who dared swing on their private swing was his own damn fault. The rope itself gave clues that real climbers had built this folly, but again, what if they’d built it years before and nobody had remembered where it was anymore and the rope had rotted in place, just waiting for some fool to test it’s formerly formidable strength. Or maybe the red squirrels had gnawed partway through the top of the knot, just enough to make it feel sturdy, but also enough to allow a passing swinger to plunge to his death before even one swing of the pendulum, or worse to give way at the apex of his arc, flinging him out and up towards the canopy, body flailing like a hammer tossed by a giant?

While all these thoughts whirled through his mind he lost his footing and involuntarily launched himself out into space. The slope was so steep he was zooming through space before he could even catch his breath, each foot of forward motion taking him two feet higher above the planet. He hung on for dear life, praying the rope would hold. It wasn’t until he found himself ebbing backward towards the cliff that he realized the rope was holding and he wasn’t going to die. This thought was quickly followed by the thought that he might not die but he might still fuck himself up royally as he was unable to catch himself on the upswing, the loose collection of pine needles and duff working into a cloud under his frantically scrambling feet.

And then he was off again, rocketing out and up, seemingly into the treetops themselves. This time he was at least able to pay a little more attention to his surroundings, feel the temperature differential as he rose out of the hollow and towards the sun. His hands gripped the rope till they burned, but it held, and he pulled his feet up this time so he wouldn’t collide with the cliff on the backswing. The adrenaline rush of the first swoop gave way to a euphoria, and Henry was surprised to find himself laughing out loud, whooping with the silliness and joy of it all. A perfect Santa Cruz day: sky that kind of blue he’d never encountered back East, the smell of eucalyptus wafting through the loamy shadows of the redwoods, the temperature differential between the dark hollows and the airy reaches, and now to be swinging back and forth through it all on a hundred foot tall swing in the middle of nowhere, it was all just too much. Henry didn’t know what to do, so he continued laughing and swinging, swooping now closer, closer, his ass getting scratched on the bushes on the landward side, his head ready to explode on the sunward arm of the arc. His acrophobia was definitely still lurking there in the shadow, as his feet flew out over the void with nothing but some anonymous benefactor’s skills, goodwill, and quarter inch of rope to hold him, but the euphoria of flying overcame it, and he continued to giggle like a lunatic while gripping the rope until his fingers were raw and his thighs ached from clamping the rope between them.

After what seemed like hours he realized time might indeed be passing, and he wanted to go to the mixer, maybe meet some people (women), so he let himself slip off the seat as the earth came up toward him one more time, then slid down the steep slope, feet dragging as he reddened his palms trying to keep ahold of the rope and stop himself with his feet at the same time. He managed to stop himself awkwardly at just about the spot where the swing naturally rested, and clambered off, relieved to be earthbound again.

all material ©copyright chris carroll 2012