Free Jumping by Jane Peranteau Page A

helplessness. My heart raced up out of my chest and into my throat, and I couldn't catch my breath. I wanted to scream but only little gasps came out, like the sound a small child would make or someone in pain. I grabbed and twisted and turned, trying to get myself into some sort of protected position, until it became clear the force of the fall didn't allow for holding any position long. I never realized how much having our feet on the ground supported so many other things, like arms and neck and head—and stomach.
    The walls of the tunnel moved past too quickly to look for hand or toe holds.
    They seemed fairly smooth and unmarked in the beginning. I couldn't see what was down below me, either. It just was dark down there. I had no choice but to let the falling take me.
    So, I fell.
    Surprisingly, the tension and fear in me lessened pretty fast. That was the other thing I had no way of preparing for or expecting—how quickly we adapt, physically, emotionally, to whatever condition is thrust on us. I fell, and I accepted falling and the peace that seemed to come from not fighting it.
    I fell, and my mind still worked, so I was conscious of the fall, and curious about it, too. How far would I fall? Would I be killed in the landing? When would it come? I knew the fall would end—I didn't believe this was the Void to nowhere. Then I noticed it wasn't pitch black and it wasn't freezing cold, two things I had expected. There was some sort of pale glow all around me, and it felt pleasantly cool in the tunnel, not cold, probably because of the air rushing by me that my falling body created. I was just falling now, at a reclining angle, with feet first.
    I could see the walls were rock but not as unbroken as I'd originally thought. Now and then, I would see markings of some sort on the walls or I would fall past an opening, at times on both sides of my tunnel, and would get the sense there were other tunnels like mine, extending down. I'm pretty sure there were falling bodies in those tunnels, too, people and animals. It was a combination of hunch and sound. I heard no screams or calls; it was just the sense of wind-brushed, rushing solid masses, of varying sizes and shapes. I didn't know what to make of that. The openings came on too quickly and passed before I could think of calling out myself.
    It sounds like a nightmare experience, as I tell it, but I can't say it was. Even though I was falling quickly, I felt suspended somehow, maybe because of my sense of falling and having an awareness of my fall, describing it to myself in my head as I went.
    The truth is, falling added to my growing sense of excitement, which was different than my original panic-fueled resistance. Everything around me felt alive, and I did, too. Part of me wanted to whoop and holler. I was captivated by my own experience in a way that was new to me. Sure, I wanted to know where I was going. But I was the central character in my own drama now—I made this happen, when I chose to jump. In falling, I was carrying responsibility for myself in a way I never had. I felt more complete, more whole, more fully embedded in my own existence than I had ever thought possible. I may have disappeared from the physical world, but in this one, I got found.
    I don't know how long I fell. It felt like a long time. But what's time in a tunnel? I can't say. I kind of feel as if I have an understanding of the relativity of time now, how it depends on perspective and circumstance. I know a bunch of it seemed to pass that I can't really account for. I can't imagine that I slept while falling (!), but I can't account for every minute, either. I know I had random thoughts, of Reggie, of my mother, of being a child, rolling down a grassy hill at twilight, with other kids, of hearing the call to come in, and not wanting to.
    Then suddenly, when I was at my most relaxed, it was as if a gust of wind pushed me into one of the openings in the wall to my left, and I landed on my behind,