Why just face your fears when you can walk right over them? The way my stomach rises to my throat while I’m Philippe Petit-ing across this laughably narrow suspension bridge is a pretty compelling reason. The Arizona landscape holds me in from all sides, the rugged canyon rising from 100 feet below. The terrain is dotted with giant cacti, the likes of which I’d only ever seen before on children’s pajama patterns. These goofy-limbed fauna have been making me smile ever since I touched down in the southwest. But smiles are tricky to sustain when you are fairly certain that you are about to die.
I grip the steel guardrail that my harness is double-locked into and try to ignore my surroundings. I focus on the eyes of my gentle guide, Ryan. I’ve been told he’s a goat—not a Simone Biles G.O.A.T., but the kind of guy whose idea of a “day off” involves scampering up mountains. Right now, though, he’s more of a service animal, coaxing me from inches away as I walk this 200-foot-long plank. The iron structure was custom-designed to be extra narrow and transparent, in order to instill all the more terror in those who sign up to cross it. My stomach is in my throat. Why did I say yes?
“Who in your family might like this?” Ryan asks in his gentle voice. “My daughter,” I manage as I take a step towards him. He nods and asks how old she is. I feel the wind against my cheeks as the suspension bridge sways ever so slightly. I am a rictus of terror. I cannot remember her age. I don’t know how to speak at all. “You’ve got this,” Ryan assures me. The stench of fear rises off my skin. I take another baby step forward.
I’d been hemming and hawing about doing this part of Castle Hot Spring’s adventure course until a few hours earlier, when I met a lively mother-daughter duo on a morning hike through slot caves and under ancient Indigenous petroglyphs. “You’ll be fine,” the mother, a North Carolina resident who used a walking stick, told me. “I did it and I’m a senior citizen on Medicare!” Her daughter, a Jessica Simpson lookalike, swore up and down that she shared my phobia of heights. “You have to do it,” she said. “It’s terrifying but it’s incredible. You’ll be fine.”
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