Summertime Free Fall

By Sam Gumprecht

I stand with one of my feet gripping the rusty railing, the other firmly mounted to the aged wood of the bridge. My fingers are wrapped one by one around the iron bar tightly. My eyes catch the flitting sunlight on the water down below me as it ripples in little scaley waves. The sunshine in the azure sky warms my back, sharpening my tan lines as I wait. The breeze brushing across my bronzed skin, carries with it the smell of the dirt road and the fresh air of the pines lining the shore of the lake. My hair, that is streaked white from the touch of the sun, coils and waves in the wind. Freckles dot the slight pink of my cheeks like stars on a clear night.

I stand there, hunched over as my eyes catch the sign that clearly states “No Jumping”. But that’s just for decoration I decided as I surge off the wooden bridge. I fling myself out over the water and a small shriek of panic and excitement slips through my smile. My limbs each go a different direction and the feeling of free fall churns my stomach like a whirlpool. My mind goes blank, and for a second I think of nothing.

Before I know it my body plunges into the water and my feet sink to the ice cold depths beneath the surface. It seems to hold me for just a split second and everything seems frozen, as I’m suspended in the moment like someone hit pause. I push up to the air just to let out a burst of laughter mixed with the gurgles of water. Looking back up to where I pushed off just a few seconds before the bridge doesn’t seem as high as it felt looking down. I glide in to the shore and hobble my way back up to the bridge hopping from rock to rock. My suit drips with the fresh lake water as I shiver from the sudden change in temperature. Within a minute I have mounted myself again on the railing and bridge, taken a quick glance at the sign and flung myself off into the water just to feel that little bit of panic and excitement again. I could do this little routine for hours. In this exact moment, at a small bridge on a big lake, in a little town in the middle of nowhere is where I feel most alive.