Not Even Not Zen 430: Aleksi, Note 3 - Remissions and Decisions

Remissions and Decisions 

In the spring of 1989, I got a call from Donna. I'd known about Aleksi's cancer since about a week after I met him, so it had been five years. It had become, in my mind, another part of who he was. He was always dealing with cancer. 

For all those years, he had been treating it through an envisioning practice. Basically, when tumors got bad, he would envision them getting small. He would picture his body, his whole self, as healthy. By force of will, he succeeded with some tumors. At least, that's how it seemed to me. I'd used envisioning techniques myself for a decade with good results — conquering my fear of heights, for one — but my modest successes didn't stop me from worrying about Aleksi. After all, visualizing yourself stepping up to a cliff edge is a different proposition than visualizing yourself beating cancer.

Aleksi didn't want to hear about any of the standard, prescription medicines. As it turned out, he had good reasons for that. What was available for his cancer was known to be crap.

Although a few cancer treatments had started to work in the mid 1970s, after decades of development, no treatment had been devised that was able to beat the type of lymph node carcinoma Aleksi had. Relying on doctors to find a successful treatment in his lifetime was an uncertain hope at best. Except for Donna’s support, he was really on his own. 

In addition, Aleksi knew the available treatments meant getting mustard gassed - not metaphorically, but literally. Chemotherapies in the 1980s were a series of attacks on the body. They descended in spirit (and in science) from World War I, when doctors learned that mustard gas destroyed white blood cells. The ideas developed more during World War II, when doctors found that nitrogen mustard reduced tumors. From those initial observations, and after a lot of trial and error, researchers pioneered the first medically tested chemotherapy. The treatment killed enormous numbers of body cells. The hope was to kill the cancer cells among them, then let the body regenerate. Aleksi didn't relish the idea of subjecting his body to the attack when there had never been a successful treatment. 

But when Donna called me, she told me there was something new. 

“This is for Al's type of cancer,” she said. “Specifically. Someone has lived through the treatment. The patient has gone into remission.”

"Fantastic!" It was a huge surprise. I had never wanted to voice pessimism but I'd also never believed we would all make it to this point. "He’s enrolling in a trial, right?”

“We have already enrolled him. That means we're coming down to your area."

"Can we see you?" My spirits soared at the idea and I could feel my eyebrows go up. "When?"

"We’ll be busy with the cancer treatments a lot of the time," Donna sounded thoughtful. "But, yeah, that's why I'm calling. We want to see you. We want to drop by your place. And we want you to come by the hospital and visit."

I asked if I could talk with Aleksi. Donna admitted he was reluctant to speak with anyone. He was still in shock, apparently, about the existence of a real treatment and its single but important success. He heard us talking, though, and his voice grew closer as he asked for the handset. When he got on the phone, Al said only a few words. But he sounded committed to going to the NIH. He reassured me despite the hesitation I heard in his voice. He seemed to be still catching up to the fact this was happening.

In Maryland, we got a brief visit from Donna and Aleksi. At the end of it, they told us they would be busy for a while but they would keep in touch. It took me a couple of weeks before I broke down and made the call to them so I could find out what was going on. 

After a long conversation, confusing for me, we arranged a trip. It was not for them to visit us, as we had originally planned, but for us to drive down to them in Bethesda

"Your place in Frederick is a little farther from the NIH than I pictured, at home," Donna admitted.

I was a long highway trip but to me, it didn't seem too bad. I had grown up in the area, loosely speaking. To my girlfriend it was a bigger deal but she never complained. We scheduled it, planned for coffee during the drive, and after a few wrong turns at the end, we managed to visit Aleksi and Donna at a Bethesda apartment. 

After our initial visit, we kept making phone calls. Eventually, we arranged another visit, this time to see Aleksi in his hospital room.

"I have to warn you," Donna said. "He seems sort of down. Sometimes he gets cranky."

That's why we're visiting, I thought. He can be cranky at us instead of Donna or his nurses. Or we can just take his mind off the treatments for a while. 

Donna was right. When we got there, Aleksi looked tired. It had been a confusing drive, too. The sign outside the hospital said National Naval Medical Center, not National Institutes of Health. I didn't understand. I had to guess they were the same thing. (In fact, there had been an overflow of beds in the NIH Clinical Center, so Aleksi had been moved to the Naval Medical building. The two institutions cooperated often and, although Donna probably told me about it, the fact didn't sink in. I had no clear concept of what was going on.)

This was how I got to know the NIH for the first time. I sat in a hospital room. We talked about how the treatment was proceeding. Aleksi sounded upbeat, actually, or maybe he simply felt better for having friends visit. In every aspect of his progress, he had good observations to make. He felt well treated. Donna thought he was getting attentive care. Aleski said he stood a good chance of beating his cancer. 

I left feeling better about him. On the way home, my girlfriend and I reinforced our cautious optimism. 

After more time and more phone calls, we met again. This time, we gathered with a couple other friends of Aleksi, although they were strangers to me, and we started by sitting on chairs and chatting around a coffee table. Donna and Al had coordinated an event. After we discussed what we were going to do, we started an organized support session. 

Aleksi had lost his hair. He still looked healthy, otherwise, if a bit worn down. He lay on the floor in a comfortable position while the rest of us lent him energy, touching him or not, and we all envisioned him feeling better and getting healthier. For his part, he did the same. He tried to feel the human connection and love. He tried to feel his body getting better. 

It went on for what seemed like a long time, although it was probably only fifteen minutes. I did a lot of holding Aleski's right hand. I tried to send him all the healing I could. I remember feeling very in tune with my surroundings and my desire for Aleski to heal - to attain a sense of complete well-being. I think I slipped off into a trance state for a while, just maintaining contact and giving, as simply as possible, from my spirit. 

Somehow, I think with signals passing between Donna and Aleski, Donna managed to call an end to the session. Everyone backed off by a step. Aleksi took a spot on a sofa with Donna by his left side. 

"I felt really good energy from someone holding my hand," he said.

Everyone pointed at me. I had no idea if they were right. I knew what I wanted for Aleksi, though. I walked over to him. He took my hand again.

"Thank you," He nodded. 

We socialized for a while. However, Aleski had limits. He was in the toughest cycle of his chemotherapy. It felt like barely a minute later that Donna started escorting people out. My girlfriend handed me my jacket. 

A few years later, I got my Master's of Computer Science degree. I had gone through a lot of girlfriends in the meantime. I'd decided I wanted to have children and a family, a reversal of my previous mindset, and my previous mostly-goth crowd didn't seem to harbor many women who agreed with my new goal. I had to learn to socialize with different sets of people. Then I got a young woman pregnant, got married, and bought a house, It was time to go out on the job market and try to pay bills.

A head-hunting company said they had two offers for me, one working for the Department of Defense, the other working for the National Institutes of Health. At the NIH, I would be making less money, I interviewed there, anyway. I could see the work there was good. In my previous interview for the Defense department, I saw I'd have to evaluate computer configurations for a company delivering and maintaining military systems. At the NIH, I would get to be in the hospital and in the labs. I would fix the machines with patient data and make it possible for the doctors to take medical images of their patients.

And I remembered Al in his hospital bed. I remembered his remission. And I thought about having something to do with that, anything at all. And I said yes to the NIH and trying to do my part.
 

Not Even Not Zen 429: Aleksi, Note 2 - The Only Handball Incident

The Only Handball Incident

We got up early to play. My girlfriend wrung her hands, either panicked or enthusiastic about me going off without her. But of course she came along partway. That was a pattern we were developing without knowing it. We drove together to Donna and Aleksi's house in Northampton. There, I put on tennis-club shorts so I could play handball with Aleksi. I had never played before. 

"I don't have a spare glove," he said. "But I don't think it'll matter."

Aleksi drove us to a gym, where I discovered that a handball court is the same as a racquetball court. At least, it was at his club in Massachusetts. The room he had reserved looked good, three walls of smooth, painted concrete and a fourth of inch-thick glass. It was a gleaming space. Across the polished, wood floor ran a single red line, the serving line.

"Drop once, then serve," he said, moving his arms to show me. He smacked the ball across the room. 

"Wow!" I said, sort of meaning 'ow' when I served a second later.

The lessons continued despite the hot ouch of hitting the ball without a glove. We practiced different shots. Aleksi taught me how to play the corners, which ended up being the important part. The best bounces hit three walls close together, so the ball returns in a weird direction. You had to learn to expect the direction. Even the best players got fooled sometimes; and I was a beginner. 

I'd say I learned the rules and we played a game but I think, in fact, we started a game and worked on the rules together. But I did learn. And we did play. And we kept on. We kept hitting and running and laughing at the crazy angles of the rebounds.

"Good shot!" Aleksi said every now and then. "You're getting it."

In half an hour, the encouragement turned to, "Excellent anticipation!" and "You've got it." 

We played and played, game after game. In theory, we were waiting for a handball friend of Aleksi's. A couple of times, Al wondered aloud about where the fellow was. Eventually, the man arrived, not quite an hour late. He turned out to be a medium-sized, dark-haired young fellow. He wore a charcoal grey shirt, unusual for a club setting, and had longish hair like a college student. He gave a strong handshake and seemed to have a practical, skeptical approach to everything, more like one of the locals than a typical freshman. 

"Where's your glove?" he asked me after the handshake. 

"First time," I said. 

"I figured I'd let him decide if he likes it before buying equipment," Al chipped in. His friend raised an eyebrow, which should have been a clue. 

"The ball is hard," he observed. "Doesn't it hurt to hit it with a bare hand?"

"Yeah," I admitted. 

We all shrugged. After another warm-up session, we started playing competitive games. And we kept on, game after game. Eventually, Aleksi's friend walked to over to his watch, which he had left next to his bag. 

"It's been an hour," he announced. He glanced at me. "How's your hand?"

"Well, it hurt when I started playing. Then it got buzzing, all tingly," I said. "Now I can't feel it."

"Huh."

He put down his watch, took a drink, and returned to play. We kept on going. Aleksi's friend was an experienced player. He won most of the matches. Al got a couple. A few times, my score got close. At the end of one game, my arm felt tired. It must have shown.

"I think it's time for you to stop," said Aleksi's friend. "Probably we all should stop."

"Why?" Aleksi asked. 

"I don't like him playing without a glove," the fellow replied. "I don't trust it."

When we got back, Donna and my girlfriend treated us to an early dinner. Donna mentioned how I was eating left handed. The fingers on my right hand were shaking too much. Once I made the switch, though, I didn't much notice. Afterward, we played cards for a while. I felt fine.

The next morning, I woke up to find my right hand replaced by a grapefruit. It was a lump of purple flesh that throbbed. Ugh. Fortunately, I had busted my right hand a lot like this in high school. I knew how to handle it. My left hand would do most of the work for the day, no problem. The most difficult part was the involuntary horror on people's faces when they noticed my purple grapefruit.

By the evening, I realized this might go on for a while. Sure enough, on Monday morning I could drive but I had to report to work one-handed. I was installing computer systems in a bookstore. The staff, all older women, responded with an outpouring of motherly sympathy. They made me hot chocolate. They did the typing. (I did a little left-handed work.) All in all, it promised to be an entertaining week. My hand, beaten like a cheap steak as it was, returned to normal over the course of a few days. The next time I saw Donna and Aleksi, I had full movement in my fingers.

My girlfriend couldn't resist describing the lump that had been the purple grapefruit, though. Aleksi frowned, apologized, and never invited me to handball again.
 

Not Even Not Zen 428: Aleksi, Note 1 - Cosmic Encounters

Cosmic Encounters

It was a Saturday afternoon in early spring, warm enough (for Massachusetts) to enjoy being outside, but free of pollen (because it was Massachusetts). My girlfriend had some of her friends over, which meant by social logic, I invited my friends, too, even though I was not one of my girlfriend's nine roommates. So for my part, I'd invited Aleksi and Donna. 

This is pretty much the way it works in your twenties. You inherit social groups the way you inherit old furniture. Sure, you didn't choose it exactly but here it is and it's pretty comfortable. At this point, I'd graduated and moved back to Massachusetts because, in its way, it was comfortable. I only sometimes slept in my girlfriend's mod. (Note: she called her group home a 'mod' because the term at our college was short for 'modular houses.' She lived in one of a row of apartments designed with the sort of bold minimalism that says, 'We had a budget of eighty dollars and a dream.')

However, there's only so much socializing you can do over a meal before your pants file a formal complaint. I've always preferred games. They give you something to do with your hands while you talk. We played spades, hearts, and rummy around the mod dining room table for about an hour. Then Aleksi got out something he'd brought by pre-arrangement, a board game called Cosmic Encounters. He said he had played it once before and it was great. He said it wouldn't take long to learn. This is, of course, what people always tell you about new games, although the learning curve for a game is sand in the gears of fun. As it turned out, though, Al was right. He had prepared. By the time we had set up the hex-grid board, he was done ensuring we knew the rules.

I was all for it. This was yet another social thing. And even though I'd never played, I assumed I'd do well. I usually pick up social games pretty quickly because I grew up with them. They were as good as bowling or, nowadays, as axe throwing.

"Is that whiskey?" Al asked when I sat back down with a glass. Because my girlfriend encouraged me to drink, I had fallen off the wagon. Anyway, it was a college environment in the 1980s. A little smoking and drinking could be taken for granted although, in the mod, hardly anyone did actually smoke except for a little weed behind closed doors or an occasional tobacco cigarette outside.

"Do you want some?" I offered.

He shook his head. "Not today."

Two of my girlfriend's roommates sat down to play with us, while others did what people do on a relaxed college Saturday. They drifted in and out of the room, raided the fridge, and maybe leaned against the kitchen counter to watch for a while. Sitting at the board, I concentrated for a few minutes. In Space Empires, each player gets two alien races, and each race comes with its own special powers. That's the game's way of giving everyone a fighting chance while also, it turns out, giving me a completely unfair advantage because about two minutes in, I saw how my two races were a good match. It was like they'd been waiting for each other their whole fictional, alien lives. After a couple of turns figuring out how movement worked, I started to methodically wipe the map with everybody.

Toward the end, the social pressure started to mount. My girlfriend was making sad eyes at me. Her roommates were sighing with quiet dignity. I felt I'd gotten caught up in my winning strategy so much I'd forgotten to be nice to everyone.

I had six captured systems and needed seven to win, so I did the usual, good-winner thing I often did: I eased off to let everyone catch up. I declined to take the seventh system - although I figured I would take it in another turn or two.

I had not, however, been paying any attention to Aleksi. He had been lurking in the middle of the pack. I got up to make myself another drink, returned to stand over the board with my glass in hand, and discovered Al building up a huge space force. Then it was his turn to wipe the map with everyone. I sat down and tried to stop him. But he used his special alien powers. Really.

He won. He crushed everyone and knocked me back from a winning move at the same time. On his next turn, he expanded to nine systems. There was no way to bust him back to six. I hadn't encountered anything like this in years.

"Why did you ease up?" he asked me at the end. He placed his final piece on a hex.

"To be nice?"

"Well, it's not so nice." He hunched his shoulders a little.

I knew Al enjoyed the social aspect of games. I had never realized how much he liked to compete.

"I had to teach you not to do that," he said. "I mean, if I could. I had to get lucky, too."

He hadn't been lucky, though. And that was something for me to remember.  

Not Even Not Traveling 70: Hawaii - Oahu, Pearl Harbor

Visiting Pearl Harbor

We were headed to a place where ride-share drivers can't get in and cell service goes to die. When ten thousand people are trying to use a cell tower simultaneously, neither ET nor you can phone home. (I believe this is also how the Hawaiian tourism board keeps people from checking their email.)
 
Our bus driver checked our identification and handed us our tickets — not for the bus ride, but for our Navy transport to the U.S.S. Arizona. Those were the reason Diane had booked us with a cheesy little tourist company with a red, double-decker bus.

We stepped aboard as the first bus passengers. Unlike many others from the Zaandam, we hadn't waited until the day of the tour to try to get into the memorial. From the dock, we rode in pre-arranged bliss - not splendor but still, it wasn't bad - diagonally across a third of Oahu, picking up other visitors along the way. 

The Arizona

We arrived at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial with time to spare, confirmed our reservations, and toured the park and museums before getting in line. Finally, the Navy called us up. We sat in a theatre and watched a newsreel about the U.S.S. Arizona. The basic theme was: this is a gravesite. Be respectful.

When we boarded the Navy transport to the sunken grave, that was the theme, too.

"You are not expected to be silent," said the Lieutenant to the crowded seats in the main cabin. "However, you will be escorted from the memorial if your behavior is loud or irreverent. Remember, there are passengers coming to visit their relatives who died here. There are over nine hundred men buried in the ship due to the battle. We have the remains of forty-eight men who have died since. They have chosen to be buried with their comrades, serving in the eternal duty, as is their right."

"You will also not be permitted to take pictures on the way to the memorial or to stand up in this craft while it is moving." He gestured to the pilot. The lieutenant had earlier given cast-off orders to a seaman recruit and a petty officer. Now, his ship accelerated.
 
Our transport was a small, partly open vehicle. Even from my seat, I could see how shockingly shallow the harbor was. We coasted less than forty feet above the silt-covered bottom. How had cruisers and aircraft carriers ever navigated through here? There must be deeper channels somewhere, though the whole place seems to have the nautical depth of a wading pool. No wonder the attack used only mini-subs — a full-sized sub would have gotten stuck like a bathtub toy in the sink. No wonder so many American ships got grounded here, too. Even the U.S.S. Nevada, which escaped during the attack, deliberately ran aground near Hospital Point. The crew had no choice; they had to beach their damaged battleship or risk blocking the harbor channel.

The memorial itself was a small building, spare and scrubbed, set in calm position above the sunken ship. Walking up the ramp, the crowd fell quiet. Inside, even the children stayed subdued — which, if you have taken children anywhere solemn, you know is miraculous. Yes, everyone had been warned. But warnings and children have a complicated relationship. This time, at least, they listened.

We filed into the place with a long pause to look down at the rusty remains of the U.S.S. Arizona. Then we nudged ourselves forward and went to pay our respects. We stood in the sanctum with the list of names carved in marble. We read them all, slowly. Then we looked for family names. We noticed a Naylor, a Hess, and several Roberts who died that day. There were six of the Roberts clan, in fact, and the lieutenant had mentioned to us, in an offhand way, how some sailors had been entertaining approved visitors when the surprise attack began. It looked like the Roberts family had been in attendance and the guests had died here along with the sailors.

Later, in the hallway over the water, we leaned over the rail and studied a rusted hatch of the Arizona. We thought about the men buried here by the attack and their friends who had asked to be buried with them.

The Pearl Harbor Museum

Back on land, we spent a lot of time reading about the attack. We watched footage, too. Hundreds of people told their stories, including children who survived, a few of the Japanese-American soldiers, the husband and wife teams in the military, the Japanese-Americans who were classified as 4-C and weren’t allowed to serve, the firemen who tried to stop the blazes and got shot by both Japanese and American forces, a pilot who had managed to get his plane off the ground, and another pilot who flew in from an aircraft carrier and was shot by his own side.

As it turned out, Diane had not known the timeline of the attack. It helped her to find the museum being so clear about the order of things. I might not have noticed, myself, but she commented on it twice.

We both liked the interview footage. In one of the museum buildings, interviews played on a loop. Each film captured the stories of soldiers (American and Japanese), civilians, children, and Hawaiians of all backgrounds as they were affected by the opening attack of a war. These were firsthand accounts. True, they were mostly captured forty or fifty years after the incident but at least someone thought to record the stories.

Personally, I was peeved that the codebreaker display in the museum was broken. There was a decoding device available, a flimsy cardboard-and-plastic thing about a yard long filled with dialed numbers. It was possibly a replica of the Purple Machine. But no one could get it to work. A gear inside had stripped and no operator could dial up the decoding sequences.

However, I enjoyed the statistical displays, including the military demographic ones. At the time of the attack, the Japanese had a much greater military force than the United States. Seeing the forces graphed side by side helped make the disparity clear. You could understand why Japan's leadership felt it was reasonable to try to knock the United States out of the action. They could dispense with America as a second-place opposing power in one shot. That may have been wishful thinking, of course. Some Japanese leaders thought so at the time. But the military advantages Japan possessed apparently convinced the rest.

And Japan did succeed. At the end of the day on December 7, the United States Navy had only three aircraft carriers left. Those were out on a routine patrol, so they missed the action. Add to those the four cruisers, a couple submarines, and a few smaller ships always on patrol, and the U.S. had a tiny fleet, too small to offer a serious fight. The Pearl Harbor attack led to as good an outcome as the Japanese military could have hoped. Yet it wasn't enough.

Japanese conquered most of China, swaths of the Soviet Union, Taiwan, Korea, South Sakhalin, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, Burma, East Timor, Guam, the South Seas Mandate, Wake Island, Kiribati, and many Pacific islands too small to list. Some of those countries don't exist anymore, of course, but the point is that Japan succeeded in occupying them all. They had plans to subjugate more, including Australia, New Zealand, and Siberia. They accomplished it all largely without allies, except for Germany on the other side of the world, and Thailand, which was not a major force. If they hadn't kept expanding - if they had paused to solidify their positions - they might have kept an empire.

The Submarine Museum

We only saw the outside of the U.S.S. Bowfin, a beautiful submarine, because we'd miscalculated our time. After the Pearl Harbor museum, we walked over to find we had half an hour before our tour bus left.

"We could run through," I suggested.

"Pretty sure they won't let us," said Diane.

We had time to walk around the submarine memorial outside and read the plaques. While I did, I tried to learn what we were missing. Life aboard submarines had always seemed claustrophobic to me, and after reading about it — yep, it was absolutely awful. Submariners lived in a sealed metal tube with no sunlight, no privacy, and no way out, like an open-plan office building but with torpedoes.

What I did enjoy learning about was the evolution of submarine technology. The improvements were remarkable; running an early submarine required either extraordinary bravery or a complete failure to read the brochure.

The Navy built the U.S.S. Bowfin as an upgrade to the fleet. It launched exactly one year after the Pearl Harbor attack and went on to become one of the most decorated submarines of the Pacific Theater. It earned credit for sinking thirty enemy craft and damaging seven more. Like the U.S.S. Missouri, the Bowfin is now open to the public. And the museum attached to it has four thousand or so submarine-related mementos. It's got a dissected Poseidon missile. It includes an audio tour so you can get a good idea of what the relics mean and how they were used. But we mostly toured the Waterfront Memorial.

The Waterfront Memorial

The Navy can't recover the remains of those lost when a submarine gets destroyed. Instead, they have a memorial outside the submarine museum for those people. The site arranges fifty-two plaques in a semi-circle. It offers specifics on each of the lost submarines, including the names of the crew members.

Close by on the park grounds, the Navy displays more war relics. You can look through a periscope from the USS Parche. You can see parts of a Japanese Kaiten, which was a manned torpedo. As one might imagine, the pilots of the Kaiten had to be pretty dedicated. Due to a manufacturing problem, water leaked into the operator and engine compartments. Solving the problem was never a priority. Instead, Japan issued the pilots a self-destruct mechanism in case, for some reason - like taking in too much water - they missed their target.

More Oahu

Well, Honolulu is unlike anything else in Hawaii because it's a true city, not a town, and it's anchored by a world-class international harbor, Kulolia. Pearl Harbor, too, is set apart from the rest, although in spirit it felt to me a little like Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau, the City of Refuge on the big island. They are both places shaped by the hardships endured there and the sacrifices made. Maybe that's the only connection they have but, to me personally, one reminded me of the other.

The attack on Pearl Harbor changed Hawaii's place in America. Before December 7, 1941, Hawaiians had reason to doubt whether the mainland would stand by them in a crisis. After that day, they knew. America had felt struck when Hawaii was struck. Mainlanders had come to the aid of the islands.

Before the war, there hadn't been much sentiment one way or another about making Hawaii a state. After, the question of statehood seemed redundant. Most citizens knew their answer. Hawaiians were Americans. 

 

Not Even Not Traveling 69: Hawaii - Actually Mexico

Ensenada, Mexico

I'm not sure why we pulled into a port in Mexico. We were coming from Hawaii. Our destination was San Diego. But we docked in the blue waters of a wide, arcing bay south of the U.S. border. The countryside around us started from low, white sand beaches and rose up the slopes to meet houses, hotels, a business district, and tall apartment buildings. A mile or two in the distance, beyond the city, the land rose higher into a range of coastal mountains spotted with green, semi-desert shrubs. I stared at the mountains and the bay for a long time.

Ensenada looked better than Oahu. I mean, the sight of the place made me wonder why I hadn't heard of it before. I had to remind myself how I thought the same about Missouri, where the land is beautiful but the locals either disagree or they take the beauty for granted. I don't hear many people rave about Missouri.

At dawn, the temperature rose into the 60s and stayed there, a cool, slightly-breezy January day. I knew Diane had opted for us to take a package tour because she had given me a choice of tour options. Although I had been tempted by the tequila tasting, I felt I'd done that plenty in college. So I picked the mountain ziplining. It was a way to see the countryside on our only day in Mexico.

Our bus ride to the mountains started with a drive by the gangster mansion in downtown Ensenada. Our guide gave us a quick description of the mansion's history. It hosted crime and shootings. Then it became a sort of museum. The bus and the talk from the guide continued out of town, up into the hills, and eventually took us through wine country. Finally, after most of an hour of riding and talking, the bus driver cranked the wheels to the left, pulled through a gate into a wineyard, and bounced along a gravel driveway to a house responsible for manufacturing wine and tequila. Plus they had an equipment shed for ziplining gear, which made it my destination.

Later, I found out one of the passengers bailed out when we pulled up. She made her decision as the rest of us dressed. She switched to the tequila tour.

Mountain Ziplines

Meanwhile, Diane and I clambered into the gear along with a dozen others, leg straps, shoulders, helmet, and harness. We passed inspection and hopped into another bus, this one headed up a mountain peak. In a minute, our second bus turned off the road and grinded up a volcanic trail of broken basalt, rocks, and clay. The trail disappeared. It looked like it had been washed out and filled in, by hand, with rocks and gravel. Eventually, maybe two hundred feet from the top, the bus could get no further. The trail ended in desert scrub. We had to get out and hike the rest of the way. Fortunately, we could see the huge zipline cables and the launch platform above. We had something to aim at.

We lost another person on the first climb. The guide said one of our tour members returned to the bus and asked to be taken back to the tequila house.

The rest of us didn't know. But one or two of our remaining troupe eyed the launch point nervously. The mountains around Ensenada top out at around 4,300 feet. There was a higher range to the northeast but we didn't have to worry about those. Anyway, we were elevated enough to see the ocean fifteen miles away. We saw the bay clearly, too. It was a bright day in the desert hills.

Even though it was December and we were high up in the air currents, Ensenada by the Pacific coast was warm like an early spring day in Maryland. I was fine in my t-shirt and zipline gear. Diane had to billow her jacket to let in more cool mountain breezes. Eventually, she took it off and tied it around her waist.

The zipline looked easy. Still, we could see it ran from mountaintop to mountaintop. The nervous folks knew what was coming. The hike up to the launch site let our bodies know how it was going to be. We all understood, if we were struggling to climb the last five hundred feet, our reality. We knew what lay ahead, more. Our legs understood. Our lungs did, too. Our eyes saw the depths of the valleys. Our skin felt cool, hair-whipping gusts.

The sun glinted off the ocean to the distant west and far, far below. We hadn't seen the ocean for hours on the rides to get here. We stared at it now, from on high.

"Go ahead of me," said the older man in front, tall and thin. I had been climbing slowly and patiently but nevertheless I had caught him. When he noticed, he stopped on the trail. He wiped his brow.

I hiked past him, worried we might lose another zipline partner. We hadn't even begun.

At the launch point, four college-aged tourists waited with me for the rest of our group. When I started to stroll forward to the launch platform, two of them hopped to the front. Okay, so I wouldn't go first down the mountain. That was a good thing, probably. The guide called me forward when it was my turn. He strapped me in.

My first impression when I took my running leap from the launch deck was not about the height. So I've beaten that old phobia, I guess. It wasn't the wind, either. It was the sense of being on a desert peak half-covered by scrubby trees. It was a 'Gosh, I'm on a mountain' moment.

The world went quiet. I traveled at the same speed as the wind. My hands vibrated. A whining sound rose from the pulley on the steel cable. The pitch got higher as I gained speed. Close to the end, a cross-breeze swept in and threatened to twist me backwards but I pointed my feet, aimed, and I landed fine. In front of me, the same gust had blown a woman sideways. Our guide decided to give us advice.

"If the wind pushes you around," he drawled, "let go of the straps. Spread your arms."

He had waited for a pair of older women to arrive before he repeated himself. One of them gave us a brave smile, showing us her teeth. The idea of letting go sounded crazy to her, I could tell. And to me. Extending my arms meant trusting the equipment more than my grip. But rationally, I knew I was already dependent on the harness. This wasn't different, just another step in a trusting direction.

The guide locked me into the harness for the next ride and told me to, "Wait." We watched the other instructor at the front. The guide reached out to me and repeated, "Wait, wait."

"Okay." And I thought, an impulse is not just a decision but a real pulse, a kick off.

I kicked off. The air felt warm but fresh to my skin. I had the sense of floating above the trees. I could smell them. I could feel their moisture in the dusty, mountain-desert air.

A blast of wind swept me side to side for a moment. My body turned. I spread my arms. But it wasn't working. Then I pulled in my right and stuck my left out. The roaring air spun me back to facing forward. I lowered my hands, pointed my feet, and narrowed myself like a bicycle racer down a mountain. The wind rushed faster.

As I approached the landing platform, I extended my toes. I could see where the instructor had landed. I remembered when I was eighteen, parachuting, and I didn't stick the landing because no one had told me it was possible. Well, now I knew it was possible. I wanted to nail the right spot.

"Whoa," said the instructor as I dodged him and set my feet down hard, next to his. "Oh, okay."

And so it went down the ziplines, from mountain to mountain.

We started at the highest peak and lost elevation each time. We had to hike back up to the next launch point, climb after climb, jump after jump. Mountain after mountain. Okay, it was eight mountains. At the last landing, we climbed down only forty feet to the level ground.

On the bus ride back, we had to stop for a farmer taking his cows across the dirt road. Everyone waited patiently. Someone wondered aloud about the tequila tour.