Jump

Please excuse any incoherence or even punctuation errors in this blog as I want to get the writing of it out of the way as soon as possible. The very thought of a jump from any sort of height terrifies me.

But many friends of mine delight in such activities. They give each other presents that involve throwing themselves out of aeroplanes or off platforms high on bridges or mountains. And then show me photographs or videos of the event. Why?

The most recent one was a short video of a reasonably sensible woman doing a bungee jump. She was standing at the top of what looked like a thousand foot drop into a river and leapt off.

How did this practice come about?

Land diving on Pentecost Island in Vanuatu is an ancient ritual in which young men jump from tall wooden platforms with vines tied to their ankles as a test of their courage and passage into manhood. Unlike in modern bungee-jumping, land-divers intentionally hit the ground, but the vines absorb sufficient force to make the impact non-lethal.

The first modern bungee jumps were made on 1 April 1979 from the 250 foot Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol by David Kirke and Simon Keeling, members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club, and Geoff Tabin, a professional climber who tied the ropes for the jump. The students had come up with the idea after discussing the ‘vine jumping’ ritual of Vanuatu. The jumpers were arrested shortly after.

Organised commercial bungee jumping began with the New Zealander, A. J. Hackett, who made his first jump from Auckland's Greenhithe Bridge in 1986. During the following years, Hackett performed a number of jumps from bridges and other structures (including the Eiffel Tower), building public interest in the sport, and opening the world's first permanent commercial bungee site, the Kawarau Bridge Bungy at the Kawarau Gorge Suspension Bridge near Queenstown in the South Island of New Zealand.

And if that’s not frightening enough what about jumping out of a plane. At anywhere up to 12,000 feet. Gulp.

Briefly, the use of parachutes dates all the way back to 1100 in China, the activity we call ‘skydiving’ can be most directly linked to France in the late 18th century. A man named Jacques Garnerin jumped from balloons with a parachute for show. This got the ball rolling for the popularization of parachuting, and in the transition from balloons as base platforms to aeroplanes. World War II created a mass of skilled parachutists and parachuting equipment. After the war, these soldiers weren't ready to give up the rush they got from parachuting, and this gave way to the growth of hobby parachuting.

And then there is space diving. On October 14, 2012, Felix Baumgartner broke all free fall records when he jumped from over 128,000 ft. In 2014, Alan Eustace set the current world record highest and longest-distance free fall jump when he jumped from 135,908 feet and remained in free fall for 123,334 feet. However, Joseph Kittinger still holds the record for longest-duration free fall, at 4 minutes and 36 seconds, which he accomplished during his 1960 jump from 102,800 feet.

That’s enough. I need to go for a lie down. At a height of about 2 feet.

Here’s a poem about friends and presents.

Caroline’s present

Her thirtieth birthday gift
from her friend Maggie was
a bungee jumping bouncing
shrieks screams yells

and there were more today
on her fortieth
as M’s present is opened
behind her back
by someone else

but she didn’t stamp her feet
in annoyance
not with five thousand left
and the instructor talking
above views that were lost
in swoops of somersaults

until the cord was pulled
and a canopy cirrused a sky
where rules tumbled
into wind wrapped space
letting time drift
like it did when she was a child.

First published in Reach, May 2022

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.