Tag: Harbour Island

Driven to Risks

Driven to Risks

In 1950s Wilmette, Illinois, children followed rules. Not many ten year olds would steal onto the public works property and play around on the Water Plant roof. The first taboo my sister and I broke was to gather stones and toss them from the roof into the sand below. Next, we dared each other to jump off the 1930s one-story building. The sand provided a warm soft landing and extracted plenty of triumphant giggles from two adventurous little girls.

The Wilmette Water Plant, built into a low cliff on the shores of Lake Michigan, is walled off by an eight-foot cast iron spiked fence. The street level roof sits back far enough from the shore road to avert curiosity. A 1956 building expansion required a construction entrance in the fence leaving the Water Works temporarily defenseless.

We waited until the workers left for the day and again and again sneaked onto the roof to throw ourselves off. Eventually my sister slacked off and I jumped alone. Each leap to the unknown helped transcend the uncertainty of our volatile home life. For years afterwards I dreamed I was flying. Indeed, when I took a lot of psychedelic drugs in my 20s, I relived those jumps. 

In winter, down the street from the Water Works on the same cliff system, the fire department hosed down a steep hill for sledding. Devil-may-care pre-snowboarders sailed down the icy slope standing on cardboard slabs. Eventually I tossed the cardboard and flew downhill toward Lake Michigan standing only on my brown rubber boots. Ambulances, always at the ready, carted off sledders everyday to Evanston Hospital. Never me.

I see no reason to examine why I’m driven to dangerous adventures. Risky jumps and high-flying sledding sparked a fire in me that can’t be extinguished. Perhaps those early escapades instilled self-confidence, or more likely, false invincibility. 

For a few years I spent all my expendable income on scuba diving in the Bahamas. After a short course in diving, and a few failed attempts, I jumped to the unknown once again and flippered around with the fish. I never once thought of the risks. And there are plenty. 

Scuba Diving in the Bahamas

One morning before I left the islands, I suited up and waited for the divemaster to outfit the boat. I casually mentioned to a fellow diver I was leaving that afternoon.

“Are you flying?” asked the divemaster.

Yes I was. 

“Hang up your wetsuit and get out of here! Don’t you know you’ll get the bends if you dive and fly the same day? Your insides could explode in the plane!”

On social media last week, many posts begrudged the efforts to rescue five wealthy souls lost in the Titan submarine. My risky adventures are over now, and were never so grand. But I join adventurers everywhere who cherish the U.S. Coast Guard’s salvation message:

“We don’t put a price on human life. Every person who is missing deserves to be found. That’s the mission, regardless of who you are.”

Sweet Paradise: Harbour Island

Sweet Paradise: Harbour Island

The slow slide and bump after our plane landed at the North Eleuthera International Airport told me we’d slid off the runway. I froze in my window seat seeing the tropical brush below. The full plane exploded in happy applause. We were safe.

“Don’t worry”, yelled the pilot, “this happens all the time. The sand blows onto the runway.” He backed up onto the tarmac, and the door of the plane opened to a rush of fragrance. Roses? Coconut? Ginger?

“That’s frangipani,“ said the flight attendant, “you’ll smell it everywhere.”
The low wide-leaf vegetation we drove through on the 50-mile-an-hour, ten-minute taxi ride sounded like we were driving through a cornfield. At the dock the aroma of wet gaseous pulp permeated the air from the surrounding mangrove trees. Gasoline and oil from the idling water taxis stirred up into the tropical air. Fellow passengers and I boarded the small canopied motorboat with our suitcases full of clothes we’d never use.

We sped off toward Dunmore Town, the only tgovt_dockown on Harbour Island. Saltwater sprayed our welcoming faces and dried out our pollution-soaked nostrils. The sun heated, then soothed the top of my head, melting my restlessness.

Flowery shirts on happy-faced Bahamians greeted us on the crowded oversized cement dock. I announced to the gathering on the dock that I was going to Sunsets and was directed to Otis, the driver for all visitors to Sunsets. The 2-mile drive from town on a low sandy road through high vegetation evoked adventure. Otis talked all the way in an accent I had never before heard.

I had just run out on a job as the campaign manager for a dying cause. I’d been at a loss as to how to keep the campaign afloat with only one other paid staffer. Feeling depressed, disappointed in myself and physically weak, I complained to my cousin Therese who told me to join her, her husband and two children in their vacation house in the Bahamas.

Sunsets, a 3-bedroom cottage with windows all around looked westward onto the bay between Harbour Island and Eleuthera. I claimed my room, unpacked, and waited the few days for the family to arrive. I  read James Michener’s Caribbean while lounging in a hammock between two rubber trees. Snorkeling in the undulating salty turquoise water under a cloudless sky, I kept a slow pace with the barracuda, sea turtles, starfish, octopus – hyper-aware of every movement, every flutter, every splash.th-3

The day Therese and her family arrived I went for a long walk on the pink sandy beach, ate fresh avocados, papayas and mangoes and fell asleep with my book on the terrace overlooking the bay.  An unearthly, ominous pounding from the driveway of the cottage woke me up.  I rushed around back and found three-year-old Melissa jumping up and down on the roof of their car. She screamed, “There’s my cousin Regan!”. Sweet paradise, I was a happy camper.