wretched tree of death

Yesterday I went tubin' on the beautiful Little River in Tennessee. It was perfect weather, and I was in the mood to have a moderately intense whitewater tubing experience.

My friends and I paid our dues, grabbed our tubes, and began making our way down the river. It was a very low impact experience at first. There was nothing too treacherous about the slow drifting current. Houses were dotted along the edges, and various other people were tubing, too.

At one point, we were winding around a left curve. Off in the distance, on the right shore, a couple of teenage males were monkeying their way up a tree. Reaching the top, about twenty five or thirty feet, one guy took a flying leap off the branch. There was a good two or three second free fall before he splashed into the water. I wanted to hop out of the water and look around the platform at the bottom of the tree. So, I climbed out of the water onto land. There were wooden rungs placed all the way up the tree in an amateurish Appalachian manner. Before I could even control myself, I began climbing. The rungs were about a body length and a half apart, nailed in the middle, so it was no easy climb. Some of the steps even began turning as I stepped on the edges of them.

One of the boys at the bottom, I learned, was a sixteen year old. He was the one that had jumped out of the tree before. He also built the step ladder up the tree. He was also insane. As I reached the top, I hugged the tree for dear life. Below me, twenty or thirty feet, was the river. There were giant underwater rocks, and in the middle of them the water was black. I assumed that was the area one would jump. The sixteen year old assured me the water was fourteen feet deep. With my friends taunting me, and my nerves killing me, I made the decision to jump.

Maneuvering my body around the trunk of the tree, I stepped out bravely into the empty air. In a blur, my body plunged downward toward the black water abyss. The free fall was cold and exhilirating, and I let out an involuntary yelp as I fell helplessly. With a splash, I hit the cold water and rocketed toward the river bottom. I swam back to my tube, vowing never again to trust sixteen year olds with my well-being. I was genuinely scared, but it was also exhilirating. I escaped unscathed, and I guess that's the important thing.