Granite Point

Sunday, August 20th, 2017

It was eleven o'clock. Sharp. We were there. They were not. No matter, it was going to be a great day anyway. We settled in to a cool conversation, conversating conservatively, concisely, and courageously on how to covertly converse contractually without committing conflicted or conflagrated fallacious fallacies. Soon enough they arrived, and we took off. The drive was absolutely gorgeous, and we had a ton of fun. All seven seat were filled in my truck, and the two people in the back were loving the twisty windy road down to the river. Everybody always wants to ride back there. I can't hardly blame them, it's a lot of fun.

And then we made it. The wide river stretched out beside us shimmering up with joyful glee, just so happy us to see. We parked next to the large granite outcrop and jumped out. There wasn't even anybody there yet! Scampering up the rocks to the top gave us all a wonderful view to behold. The cliff, the drop, twenty feet of sheer terror and enjoyment. The river eyed us gleefully, was that a sparkle of mischievousness I saw there? wondering who would be the first to make the plunge into the green and blue depths beneath. Surprisingly, Kelly, a new Freshman, leapt first. We cheered us on as she flew, and then she waited for the next to come down after. One after the other jumped, plummeted, and bobbed up happily twenty feet below. Then it was only Rachel and I left. Knowing if I left her there alone she probably would take twice as long to go for it, I stayed and waited. She tried to calm and collect herself, then went to take a step forward, but stopped and breathed out. Almost! Offering some words of encouragement, she went forward again and almost went for it, but paused. Finally, she regained complete composure, got that determined look in her eye, and ran. Once you run, there's no turning back. She leapt through the air, let out a scream, and splashed into the water below. We cheered, she did it! Now it was my turn, alone up on the cliff. Eyeing the water beneath me, I realized how far down it was. An odd feeling churned in my stomach. What was that? It had been what seemed like ages since I'd felt it. Fear. Fear for the unknown. For the height. For the leap. I'd never jumped from such a height before. Closing my eyes, I prepared to run off the edge. And then I heard Christy's cry come from below, "Do a flip Leaf!" I'd already decided to jump off a few times like regular before I tried any flips so I could get used to the height, but now, that plan was gone, deserted, forgotten, like a snowball in summer. Forgetting the heights, I ran, dove, turned into a flip, and went to land on my feet in the water. Except... I had a little too much spin, and landed half on my stomach. The water was less than soft.

Ugh.... I treaded water and gently made it over to rocks where we climb out at. Now I remembered the wisdom of my previous plan, laughing at me from the dark recesses of my mind like a pack of coyotes. They taunted and jeered at my misfortune, "But hey," I thought, "it was fun at least. As the day wore on we jumped a bunch more, then moved to one of the lower cliffs when all the other university students came. They had interesting vocabularies and went through all sorts of vulgarities to coerce their fearful friends to make the jump, but where we were at it was still pretty nice, and we thoroughly enjoyed our remaining time there. We swam around, got cold, came back up, dried off, jumped in, got wet, swam, got cold, and so forth. It was great! At one point there were about five of us treading water while one person up top threw popcorn down for us to catch in our mouths. We were like so many fish coming to be fed, I could hardly keep from laughing! Then we all loaded up back in the truck and drove back through the twisty windy road that eventually led back to town.