Don't Look Down

15 juillet 2010 jeudi

A few crucial words for when one is attached to a rope, 20–25 feet above the ground:

1: PASSERELLES DES CIMES = Treetop Pathways
Today, the Delannoy family treated the children to a trip to Acrobranche, a high ropes course nestled in the quaintly Provençal Luberon valley, near Fontaine de Vaucluse. Acrobranche has 6 treetop courses of varying difficulty, and I must say, I myself was challenged. As my parents can testify, I’ve been a fanatic of heights from a very young age. My mother had to rush out of the house with a laundry basket full of pillows when she found me hanging from my knees from the top of our story-and-a-half tall swing set. I couldn’t have been more than five years old, and hadn’t quite developed a sense of practical danger yet. As a child, I would walk the perimeter of our barn on the rafters, and even now, if you give me a boulder big enough, I will probably climb it. However, the high ropes courses at Acrobranche still gave me a thrill and got adrenaline pumping though my veins.

2: UN MOUSQUETON = Climbing Caribbeaner
One thing that is refreshing about Europe is that business liability seems to be much more lax than in the United States. Before being let loose like monkeys out of their cages, we had no papers to sign, no fitness tests to pass, no security deposits to pay. A short, required “training” session taught all visitors how to properly secure the two caribbeaners attached to our belts, and how to safely attach ourselves to a zipline. Thus “trained,” off we went. Of course, if all security measures were correctly followed, there was no real danger, and staff members surveyed the course from the ground, but it’s nice to be trusted with one’s own common sense and inherent ability to detect when one is truly in danger.

3: UNE ECHELLE A BRAS = Rope Ladder
To start off easily, we began our parcours on la piste verte—the green course. It served mostly to get land lubbers accustomed to being off the ground, and to practice walking across hanging rope ladders, or slack wires, or dangling logs. Although it was the beginners’ course, I must say, climbing backwards through a suspended barrel and then balancing on a treetop platform is certainly no walk in the park.

4: UNE TYROLIENNE = Zip Line
Travel by zip line should be established in mass. I can just see it now: businessmen in suits and leather gloves, grasping a zip line with one hand and a briefcase with the other, zipping across the open spaces between skyscrapers, sliding into an open window just in time for the 2:00 meeting across the way. After ascending une echelle à bras made of rope and logs to a platform about 30 feet up in a tree, I started the parcours aux tyroliennes. There’s something primordially satisfying about whooshing through treetops, suspended on a wire. Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.

5: ACCROCHE-TOI! = Hang on!
La liane à Tarzan (Tarzan Swing), located at the highest point of la piste rouge, the second most difficult course, briefly made my heart stop. I kid you not. After climbing up une echelle à bras, scuttling across a vertically suspended rope net, swinging across un pont de singes (monkey bars) at least twenty feet above the ground, and making my way across a slack wire, I finally found myself on a platform in a tree. Across a clearing at least 15 wide, was a giant spider web made of thick rope. Mousquetons securely attached, I was given a rope, and told to jump. Yes, jump. Across the clearing and onto the spider web that certainly wouldn’t do the catching for me. Standing on the platform, I thought of my brother Ben, and his bungee jumping adventures, and my Dad, and his experiences leaping out of airplanes, and I refused to be shown up by the Grimm men. Trois, deux, UN, came the voices of the staff members and the Delannoy family watching below . . . and I leapt. And, contrary to my the little voice inside that tells most reasonable people that jumping off of high places is a bad idea, I survived, feeling quite like a fly once I made it across the clearing to the spider web of rope on the other side.

But wait, there’s more. Alban was absolutely determined to do la piste noire, the most difficult course at Acrobranche. Gauthier came along, not to be shown up by his big brother. The boys beseeched that I join. This time, once reaching the highest platform, we were told to leap across a 10 foot clearing . . . sans rope. What, no rope? This time, I jumped at about deux et demi (two and a half), knowing that if I waited any longer I would realize the absurdity of jumping across a clearing without a rope. Of course, I was safely attached to a security wire with my two mousquetons, but hey, a human being who spends most of her time on the ground, and not in trees, is allowed to be a bit skeptical. Hesitation does absolutely nothing for skepticism in this case. Off I went.

6: UN BLEU = Bruise
By the look of my legs and forearms, one would suspect that I am violently maltreated in the Delannoy household. There is une bosse sanglante (bloody bump) on my forehead from where I fwapped myself with un mousqueton, and on la piste noire I turned my arms into sand paper, leaving thick wire-shaped scrapes in parallel red lines across my forearms and wrists from when I mistakenly used the security wire to balance myself on a parcours of logs dangling from stretchy, supple ropes. Upon arriving home, I discovered that my legs are a battlefield of bruises. And yet, I must thank the Delannoys full heartedly for my bruises, and scrapes, and scratches. It’s good to be a kid sometimes. Thank goodness I’m not afraid of heights.