Last summer my wife and I stood at the top of a scary canyon near Santa Fe, on the brim of the tallest bridge in the world. For a person like me that doesn’t even like looking down from an eight-foot ladder, the view was anything but inspiring. My feet tingled, my head got fuzzy and I couldn’t remember the last four digits of my social security number.
So, with the view and a healthy dose of vertigo, we gathered with a few tourists to look at the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, the tallest bridge in the world, 564 feet, and I believe the narrowest bridge also, which meant that every person who risked walking out to the middle was pressed a little bit closer towards the hazy edge.
I did manage to get up the courage to tip-toe out to the middle myself, only because I wanted to be able to say that I had done it; now I wish I had just come up with some convincing lie about it and told you I was sorry later. But in the interest of credibility, I walked out, letting cars pass within inches and running the risk of being knocked off into the Rio Grande. On the way, I noticed there were no speed limit signs posted, which meant that drivers who had the same fears I did were speeding as fast as they could to get across. I was mumbling some ridiculous prayers, the kind that are full of desperation and wholesale mismanagement of large portions of the Bible, when almost halfway across, I noticed a semi the size of Vermont bearing down on me, which shook every girder in the bridge and forced me to wrap my arms around the railing. After the double wide semi passed, I opened my eyes, the very thing I was dreading, and found myself looking straight down into the kind of rocky gorge you only see in wall calendars of the Grand Canyon and old episodes of Bonanza.
Luckily, or maybe not, an enormous man, I think Arnold Schwarzenegger’s brother helped me peel my fingers off the bridge rail and said:
“You aren’t scared of heights, are you?”
No,” I answered with a very high, squeaky voice, and then, quite out of nowhere, I hugged him as if he was Paul Bunyan, as if this with an enormous physique would be enough, should the bridge collapse, to cushion my fall from the tallest bridge in the world. I hugged him so hard, in fact, that he must have decided it was just easier to carry me along with him, and so began walking out the rest of the way with me still attached, hugging him, hauling me another hundred feet or so along a tiny gangplank to the middle of the tallest bridge in the world, whereupon, he let me down like I was a wrapper he’d just peeled away from a candy bar, patted me on the head, and told me to have a wonderful day.
I have to tell you, my whole attitude about the bridge, about semi-trucks, about humans a lot bigger than me, and about New Mexico changed quite a bit because of his kindness and, as it were, beefy body. One just does not get that kind of service on bridges anymore, and I was grateful, not for just the view, but for people who carry us when we are not able to carry ourselves. I know that sounds rather sentimental, and it is, but it is also appropriate, because at the time I was very emotional, in fact I was weeping, so it kind of makes sense in an old-fashioned viaduct kind of way.
Yet, no amount of thankfulness, or courage was going to get me to stand on the tiny concrete platform that had been built out over the bridge’s edge for tourists to get an even better view of the gorge or, for acrophobe like me, what death looks like from the top of the tallest bridge in the world, a place out in the middle of nowhere, where cell service is a waste of time, and ambulance service was last recorded in 1884. It was in that very moment that I realized my fear of heights was deeply rooted in a childhood memory of standing on the top of a wavering high dive at summer camp.
There I was, all of about seven years old, looking down into the third deepest lake in Wisconsin – me, a scrawny kid in a pair of blousy swim trunks several sizes too big. Taking a dare from my brother, I stood on the diving platform, at risk of being toppling off, which would be embarrassing since I’d been holding up the diving line for about an hour.
Kids had started to yell at me from below, some calling me names that hurt when you’re a kid, like sissy and chicken, and they were yelling them very loudly, which added tremendously to my anxiety. Their yells had attracted the attention of the entire camp population who were now watching my skinny toothpick body up there shaking and shivering from fear and hypothermia.
Finally, the counselor on lifeguard duty yelled up to me:
“BENDER! EITHER JUMP OR I’M COMING UP THERE AND THROW YOU OFF MYSELF!”
So, feeling for a moment that gravity did not apply to me and that Sir Isaac Newton and Copernicus and that whole ensemble of scientists were wrong, and that the world was holding me up there regardless of any theorems or gravitational efforts, I dove out, suspended for a long second in the air by a pair of parachute-like swim trunks.
However, when I hit the water at one hundred and eighty-five miles an hour, lake water rushed up my nose so hard that my eyes came right out of their sockets, and tiny marine life entered my brain which thoroughly rinsed out my sinuses along the way. Since I suffered from chronic sinus problems, the brain cleansing gave me special insights into Creation, the Apocalypse, and why Jesus loves the little children of the world.
As luck would have it, we campers had gathered for a movie the night before to watch a documentary on the Apollo moon missions. We sat on the ground of an outdoor theatre that had been set up for us, slurping our popsicles watching astronauts try to squirt toothpaste on their toothbrushes in zero gravity. There was no doubt in my mind that I could do a better job as I watched them misfire, and loops of light green toothpaste float away in the lunar module. Yes, I thought, I could have done a better job than that, thought of applying for the next NASA flight immediately. I saw myself, perhaps too gloriously, zipping around the earth and landing safely back down to earth with toothpaste to spare, perhaps even have my name on a commemorative plaque attached to the diving float at camp I was now attending. The plaque would read:
Lt. Colonel Jeff Bender,
Apollo Astronaut and Camp High Dive Specialist
Unfortunately, my qualifications as an astronaut were forfeited the next day when I entered the lake at a high rate of speed, and my swim trunks, the ones that were seven sizes too big, shot right off me in the other direction, leaving me buck naked floating around in the third deepest lake in Wisconsin. Honestly, I don’t think, even to this day, I have ever felt quite so naked, and free, as I did at that moment. With this kind of exposure, I could sense every single part of my body like never before – water rushing around me uninhibited – completely unrestricted.
However, as I floated in zero gravity, I looked down into the void and saw my patterned Bermuda-style swim trunks sinking into the abyss of Wisconsin’s third deepest lake. It was like watching a huge balloon disappear into the sky, only backwards. Now, reliving it, I think that moment was the most naked moment of my entire life. The only thing I have to compare it to was my birth, and I don’t recall anything about that
When I did come up for air, some two hours later, I looked up the next camper ready to dive, who instead decided to announce my situation to the entire camp population:
“BENDER’S NAKED!”
How this all translates to a fear of heights, I’m not sure, but I believe at the time what registered to me was that I should never place myself at any height where I might be at risk of falling and losing my clothes as long as I lived. Now, I stood in the middle of a bridge in Santa Fe, the tallest one in the world, and I could almost sense that my pants were going to pull themselves off and throw themselves into the Rio Grande thousands of feet below. It was an awful feeling, and with it came the weight of every car whizzing by me only a few feet away, including one semi-truck whose jarring vibrations had me saying my last rights and wondering when the last time I had updated my living will.
You might remember Paul Bunyan – the man who had carried me out to the middle of the tallest bridge in the world? Fortunately, he was still there with me, and had stepped out even further onto that tiny concrete platform, was leaning out over the bridge, marveling at the treacherous view of the rocky canyon hundreds of feet below and the brilliant cobalt sky beyond.
“Nothin’ between me and the deep blue sea,” he said, as if he knew the deep blue sea personally.
He was right. Except for one small detail. Way out in that great expanse of blues there was a long white line that marked the path of a jet. The contrail had a slightly greenish cast to it, like the color of toothpaste straight out of the tube, and it floated out there, free as the wind, as if it had no fear of heights at all, in zero gravity, above the tallest bridge in the world.