Author's Note:
Here's the first-person perspective on my experience. It takes place on the cliffs of South Point, on the Big Island of Hawaii, sometime during my original Sophomore Year in college, when I attended the University of Hawaii. There's a youtube video at the the end that I found for a little perspective. It's the same exact place where this even took place, but I have no idea who the people in the video are, nor who took it.
The creaking and groaning made it seem as if the platform was going to detach itself from the top of the cliff. While cliff jumping was my reason for being here, I certainly didn't want to do a tandem jump with a couple thousand pounds of decades-old lumber. That would certainly be a recipe for disaster.
I imagined myself falling foreword, with a white knuckle grip on archway on the ocean side of the platform. Falling face down towards my fate, eyes and mouth agape. It's a vision that immediately reminds me of the Nazi going over the cliff in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, a head and shoulders poking out of the top of a tank as it does a Thelma and Louise to it's fiery end at the bottom of the cliff.
The image makes me chuckle. "If this thing's been here this long, it'll hold long enough for me," I once again mumble.
"Huh?" Bracken asks me.
He's standing ten feet to my left at the lip of the cliff. His look is one of confidence. He's been here many times, made this jump countless times. Not that he needs experience to look confident. Bracken's a gym-rat. He's the type of guy that gets up in the morning and puts in two hours at the gym before the sun comes up. The visible result of that dedication is something which, deep-down, I'm a little envious of.
"Nothing," I say. "Just thinking out loud."
"Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!" From behind me, I hear what can best be described as the noise Private Joker makes when Sargent Hartman asks him to "show me your war-face!" upon arriving at boot camp in Full Metal Jacket. It's Kevin. He's running at a full sprint across the basalt plateau, running straight for the edge. It's almost a comical picture he paints. Short, awkward, a bit nerdy; his image is nothing like the near-Adonis Bracken. He runs right past Bracken, and I watch as he glides out into the void.
"Gerrrrrrronimo!"
I watch as he flails his arms and legs on the way down and at the last minute tucks his arms around his chest, brings his feet together, and looks up with closed eyes as he enters the water below.
Bracken and I wait a moment, and sure enough, Kevin's head emerges from the calm waters below.
"Wahoo! That was awesome!" Kevin screams back up. Soon he is swimming towards the old rusty iron ladder hanging off the side of the cliff. It is the only means of escape from the water below.
I take a few steps back, off the platform and onto the ground. Bracken turns and faces me, his back to the ocean.
"See you down there," he says, jumping backwards. His head snaps back, he grabs his knees to his chest and does a complete back-flip, suspended in mid-air. It's almost like a cartoon, as soon as he is right-side-up and vertical again, he plummets to the water below. I cautiously rush to the ledge and am relieved to see his smiling face looking up at me.
"Your turn," he says up to me, and makes a quick swim to the ladder.
I have one of those paralyzing moments. I want to go, but my feet don't want to move. It's a fight in my head: my conscious mind wants to do this, but my subconscious is holding me back. The human inclination towards self preservation is putting up a fight against this action that seems downright suicidal.
I look to my left and see Kevin cresting the lip of the cliff on the ladder.
"Dude, you gotta do the run and jump the first time. It's the only way you can keep from pulling back," he encourages.
I walk back from the ledge about thirty feet. My heart is racing, my palms sweating. I am about to jump off a sixty foot cliff into forty feet of deep blue Pacific Ocean. Aside from the rickety old ladder, the next nearest place to safely get out of the water is the beach a mile up the coast. I'd never make it if something went wrong with the ladder, and this weighs on my mind.
"Come on Matt, you can do it!" Kevin forcefully encourages.
I put one foot in front of the other, then another, and another. I'm at full speed when I step off the ledge into the air.
The fall is amazing. In an instant, I have tunnel vision. My focus is on the ocean below, and the spot where I will break into the blue. As I fall, my stomach finds a new home somewhere around my Adam's Apple, in the middle of my throat .
Surprisingly, the fall was not one of those adrenaline-fueled moments that seems to last forever. It was quick. So quick that I almost don't have the presence of mind to prepare myself for the force which will overcome me when I break the surface tension of the water. At the last possible fraction of a second, I bring my arms in close to my body, bring my feet together, close my eyes and tilt my head back.
I feel my body enter the water violently. The resistance of the water, coupled with the position I entered the water in makes me shudder back and forth somewhat violently. When I finally come to rest, fifteen or so feet deep in the water, I'm almost flat on my back and looking up. I start swimming for the surface, exhaling air as I pull myself up. Soon I am rewarded with the sensation of broaching the surface, and take a gigantic breath of air.
Turning my gaze back up from whence I came, I see Kevin's smiling face peering over the lip at me. I see him raise his hand and give me a thumbs-up. A salute for my successful jump.
To my right, I see Bracken, climbing the ladder to safety. He looks down over his shoulder at me.
"Was that fun?"
"You know it!" I exclaim. "Get your ass up that ladder, I'm right behind you and I want to go again!"
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