A rope swing over the river

Taking the plunge from a rope swing over the Huleia River. Photo by David Lansing.

As Heaven was taking me upriver we came across a group of middle-aged adults dropping like coconuts from a tall tree into the Huleia River. These were big people. With guts and granny arms and thin hair. Playing on a rope swing like little kids.

We stopped paddling for awhile to watch them. It was crazy. One woman, who looked to be in her mid-forties, wearing Daisy Mae shorts and an orange tank top, screamed as she swung out over the river. She refused to let go of the rope until she was almost back over the bank of the river and landed with a hard plop in about a foot of water, mud cratering up around her as if someone had just dumped a big boulder in the river. Several gentlemen were quickly called into action to get her out of the river muck.

Heaven told me that this was the spot where Harrison Ford made an escape from some bad guys in Raiders of the Lost Ark. “That wasn’t the rope he used,” she told me. “They took that one down but some people put up another.” And now tourists who take an ATV tour along the river, like this group, get to swing from the rope and pretend they’re Harrison Ford. Kind of nuts if you ask me.

One big ol’ guy, seeing that I had my camera out, commandeered the rope and swung out over the river with his head down by the water and his legs straight up in the air. He released the rope and did a very nice belly-flop. When he came to the surface, he asked us what we thought. “I’d give it a 9.0,” I told him. Heaven was less generous. “You get a 7.5,” she said. “I’m deducting points for doing something stupid and being old enough to know better.”

Heaven can be harsh.