1/15/10: Thick Air

Tyler swung us recklessly in the back of a truck. He and Hans piloted from the front as we were captive in the bed. He skidded us into the entrance of Volcanoes National Park, tires screeching in the gravel right before the ranger station. We crawled out in the haze of a scenic crater overlook. The sulphurous fog was heavy and crawling into my lungs. Tyler kept asking where we were and where we were going. He swung us around further, careening through the visitor center and towards the lava tubes. We plunged deep into the crater breathing fog. We wandered through a massive, empty, cosmic, black thumbprint. Steam was rising between the rifts in the cracked floor. We came back to the truck and ate sweet Tangelo fruit in the parking lot, pulling ourselves back into awakeness.

Some of us went back to South Point. Earlier in the day Tyler told me that once he took the jump, he dreamed of the jump. He was afraid of nothing else. I watched each of them fall off the cliff, diving through silence before the resounding splash. I steeled myself for the plunge and fell off the slab, and feel so long and through many stretched seconds, before sliding into the water. There was a rusty ladder hanging from the top of the cliff.

Back at the hostel we met a guest who was grilling us freshly caught marlin. I ate what I needed but spent most of dinner thinking about Tyler, who touched no food but rolled one cigarette after another in his dirty fingers.