~Ralph Waldo Emerson
For my birthday this year, we went on a trip to New River Gorge in West Virginia. Led by guides from their Tree Tops Canopy Tour, we traversed through the forest over tall tress and rushing waters along an elaborate and incredible system of ziplines and rope bridges! The environmentally-conscious zip line tour is a combination of short, steep hikes and ten ziplines, five skybridges, and one rappel. It was my first zipline adventure, and it was a-ma-zing!
A thought I remember having while flying through the forest sky was that the experience was far too thrilling and inexpressibly cool for my body to be so calm and my brain to be so orderly! A deep sense of peace and connection to life kept my heart strangely calm even as it and my spirit were dancing and laughing and screaming with joy. It was this strange combination of wanting to take all of it in and let it make an impression, breathless delight, and complete, logical serenity.
The question my friends and family asked me most about the trip is, "Were you scared?" Surprisingly (well, not to me), I was not! I was a bit nervous, but I found that volunteering to be the very first one to zip left no time for nervousness. haha! My only complaint, which isn't really a complaint so much as a desire for more, is that everything happened so quickly that there was barely a moment to let all of that EXPERIENCING absorb into your memory, experience, and system before it was over!
New River Gorge also has an *upgraded* version of the Treetops Canopy Tour called the Gravity Zip Line Tour. Can't wait to sign up!
Check out my photos taken from the zip line platforms, as well as a video of T zipping and someone zipping across a line below the platform we were on (they were on a zip line slightly ahead of us on the course). Awesomeness!
2 comments:
Wow-that looks like it was so much fun!
Totally was! Thanks for reading! :)
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