Peering over the edge of a short wooden gangplank leading off a high suspension bridge, I mustered as much spit from my cotton dry mouth as I could and watched it drift slowly down past the sheer walls of the gaping canyon I was preparing to hurl myself into.

I was outside of Queenstown, New Zealand, the bungy-jumping capital of the world, and in a couple of seconds a member of the jump crew would begin a brief countdown, at the end of which I had one of two choices; sacrifice all dignity and crawl back off the platform or, against basic human instinct and good sense, dive off with what amounted to a giant rubber band attached to my legs.

Bungy-jumping, the act of leaping from lofty places with a thick rubber cord fastened just above one's ankles, was brought to international attention by spectacular plunges by members of the Dangerous Sports Club at Oxford University in the late seventies. You may remember watching the end of the evening news back then as somewhat fuzzy pictures of individuals plummeting off of various suspension bridges were broadcast. As these crazies dove to apparently certain death, to be saved at the last possible instant by an elastic line which held them bounding repeatedly above the water, I thought that would be neat to try someday. It was kind of the same adolescent notion everyone had upon seeing the moon landing in '69 . You said to yourself, "Sure, I'd like to do that," but you never expected you would. Not too long afterward, you forgot about the idea altogether.

In the safety of an Auckland bar years later, the possibility of bungy-jumping had been brought up by my American traveling companions. Since our arrival in Queenstown was a comfortably distant two weeks away, and also owing to the influence of a number of beers, I said with much bravado, "Hell yeah, we'll definitely have to do it!" Shortly thereafter, however, in a moment of sober reflection, I added the single proviso that we should go through with it only if the outfit we did it with had an acceptable safety record. It was sort of an absolute commitment with an important escape clause.

The first bungy-jumpers were probably the New Hebrides natives filmed by National Geographic who, as a rite of passage to manhood, would dive off of rickety wooden towers with vines attached to their ankles. Coming into Queenstown it was quickly evident that making a jump was practically a rite of passage through this resort community; signs advertising bungy-jumping were on nearly every corner. Suddenly, I realized that having opened my big mouth two weeks before, it was going to be difficult to get out of this in an honorable fashion.

The following morning my friends and I strode over to the offices of A.J. Hackett Bungy, ltd. Once inside, I casually ambled through the place ostensibly looking over the assortment of photographs on the walls showing jumpers in various stages of bungy ecstasy. What I was really interested in was taking stock of the crackpots who were signing up. I had expected to see irrational, desultory individuals with something of a neurotic glaze in their eyes; the type that mumbles to themselves while walking down a busy street. Instead, I found people who, at least on the outside, appeared perfectly normal. I decided to investigate further. It occured to me that if I discovered they had a sizable number of fatalities, no one would blame me for backing out. Say I asked about the outfit's safety record, and they responded with something like, "It's great, we haven't lost anyone in nearly two weeks!" - I would be home free.

Upon making such an inquiry, the girl at the sign-up counter beamed, "We've handled over 70,000 jumpers without a single serious injury!" This clearly did not help my case. In reading through the company's literature, I was comforted, then gradually confronted with the plain fact that I was going to have to go through with it. Aside from providing an impressive amount of data on the development and safety of bungy-jumping, the point was made that the sport today can be likened to the way sky diving was regarded fifteen years ago.

A company booklet stated that as people became more familiar with it their opinions would change. Having parachuted before, I knew that to be a relatively safe endeavor, one not nearly so dangerous as I had initially imagined. Maybe I'd feel the same after doing this. I whipped out my Visa card, paid the eighty dollar (U.S.) fee, and signed the company release. I was scheduled to go the next morning. I felt great! Right up until I walked into an adjoining room and watched a jump video. On leaving the bridge, the jumper on the screen seemed to fall forever. - (Between four and five seconds I was told. Not too long, unless you count it off on your watch and think of plumeting into a towering gorge all the while.) Suddenly, the reassurance I had so recently acquired was replaced with the anxiety of pre-jump jitters.

The next morning, approaching the bridge at a place called Skipper's Canyon, I took a deep breath on first viewing the abysmal twenty-three story depth from the span to the bottom of the narrow chasm. Surveying the steep canyon walls and experiencing the queasy sense of height they imparted, I thought this was going to be a considerable challenge to the old sphincter muscles. I walked onto the turn-of-the-century wood and cable structure, trying to ignore fleeting waves of vertigo, perceiving a vague uneasiness in the pit of my stomach, and wishing this whole thing was over with. I hoped my turn wouldn't be too far off; waiting around was making me feel worse.

Although I had been weighed back at the office in Queenstown, to doubly insure proper adjustment of the bungy line, the routine was for all jumpers to go on the scales again at the bridge. After doing so, I inspected the cord up close, scrutinized its six-inch circumference, and recognized in attempting to stretch it that it really did have the properties of a gigantic rubber band, an extraordinarily tough one, I hoped. Suddenly, the words, "You're up next," pierced the air.

Being hooked to a bungy cord is a disconcertingly simple matter. A member of the jump crew sits you down, wraps a folded towel around your legs just above the ankles, and tightly binds it with the type of strong webbing that rock climbers use. The webbing is then hitched on to a carabiner at the end of the line. As you hesitantly rise and feel your heartbeat pick up and respiration increase, another member of the crew instructs you to shimmy your way three feet or so to the end of the plank. Other than being told that a swan dive is the best way to do it, you don't get much instruction. I suppose that's because what you have to do is pretty obvious. The one question as you're standing out there with your toes on the edge, the calves of your legs slightly shaking, and sweat slowing beading on your forehead is, will you?

Just as my meager wad of spit neared the rapids below, the countdown began, "Five, Four, Three..." It's bewildering what elements decisions like this are finally made on. For me, it was the eighty bucks on my credit card. That, and the thought of never, ever living it down if I chickened out. Hearing the words, "Two, One," I pushed off the plattorm, and seemed to be suspended in the air for a millisecond. Then, as gravity asserted itself, it began; what can only be described as an absolute sensory overload.

With my arms spread wide, my back arched, and what felt like all the blood in my body racing to my head, the canyon walls accelerated through my peripheral vision as the rocks and rapids below roared up. The perspective of the granite cliffs zooming by, coupled with a blurring of my vision and rushing wind in my ears, intensified the perception of falling. It made for the totally enveloping fear experienced while tumbling from a precipice into an inky blackness during a nightmare. Only now, in a few moments, instead of waking in the safety of my bed, the lifeline I'd placed so much confidence in would save me. About forty feet from the bottom, the expected shock from the bungy cord had not arrived, and that confidence began to very seriously erode. I involuntarily shut my eyes, thinking for a sickening instant that something must have gone terribly wrong. I didn't see my life before my eyes or anything like that.

Instead, the prospect of drowning zipped through my consciousness; pretty stupid considering that if the line had broken, hitting the water would surely have killed me. As I later found out, they call this stage the panic zone; "The best part of the jump," as one fellow of questionable tastes put it. The jolt never came. Instead, the cord gently stretched downward, carrying me to within ten feet of the rapids. Because I was, to put it mildly, possessed by an all consuming terror, I did not pick up on the fact that my hurtling descent had slowed. All I realized was that the impact I thought to be imminent was late. Opening my eyes to examine the situation, I now saw the bottom receding as I bounded upwards with a growing and extremely sincere feeling of relief. After checking my pants and realizing that I was not going to die, I immediately reassumed my pre-jump composure and began to whoop it up, clapping my hands, and yelling as if to show those watching that the whole thing hadn't bothered me much.

Following five or six gradually subsiding bounces under the span, the bungy cord finally played itself out, and I found myself in the rather awkward position of hanging upside down, slowly twisting above white water. Within a few seconds a jet boat, specifically designed to navigate in rapids, pulled up. A pole was then extended for me to grab and reverse climb down into the craft. Once in the boat, the carabiner was unhitched from the cord, and we sped off; the two crew members getting a kick out of retrieving another bug-eyed jumper, and me in possession of a memorable and entirely new appreciation for the term, "adrenaline high."

Photos by Kim Whitley