can also, if we are lucky, help us to access peak emotional experi-
ences,” writes Florence Williams inOutsidemagazine.^22 Many high
sensation-seekers are extremely lucky in this way. “I never felt as
alive as when I was so close to not being alive,” one high sensation-
seeker told me.
One adventure sports professional told me about a situation
in which he needed to react quickly and instinctively. That situa-
tion, he said, made him feel excited to be alive. “I was on the coast of
California, there’s this hike, it’s called the Lost Coast. The moun-
tains butt up against the coastline. The only way to experience this
part of the coastline is to hike 24 miles by foot. You can’t drive up to
it because the mountains are so jagged. What happens is that the
tide comes in and out throughout the day, twice a day. As you’re
walking along the coast if you don’t position yourself correctly the
tide will come in and totally surround you. You have to get to high
ground very quickly.”
I tempted fate, I pushed myself a little too hard and I was in
a situation where I had to climb an 80-foot eroding cliff, where
you’re grabbing onto roots and things like that. I had to take off
my backpack and throw it up a couple feet above me and then try to
climb up. Meanwhile the ground is literally falling out from under
my feet. If I were to fall in that situation, or get hurt, there’s no help.
There is a moment where you’re going ‘okay, hold on.’ What I’ve
learned is that you can’t let it paralyze you because that’s when you
get hurt. You have to almost have fun with it. There’s this person-
ality in me that will just turn on, and I have a smile on my face. All
right, okay, let’s do it. You have to be excited to be alive, it turns that
on to be in those situations. I would never want to have to experi-
ence that again, but when I was in that moment I wasn’t going to
shy away from it. I was just going to be in that moment and take it
how it was going to come. Then you survive and you look at it and
go okay cool, I can move on. Let’s not do that again.”
Life-or-death moments like this one came up in many high
sensation-seekers’ stories. Whether it’s street luge racing, sky surf-
ing, or parkour, there’s a right way to perform these risky activities,
and deviation from that way can result in dire consequences. They
fight the elements, the mountain, distractions, and sometimes
their own fear in order to be at the crux. They crave being in
puzzling situations – essential points that require resolution. “For
example,” O’Neill said, “Say you’re on the side of a sheer granite
wall, and you have to use your body in a very precise manner to be73 / Sports and Adventure in High Sensation-SeekingDownloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Access paid by the UCSF Library, on 11 Nov 2019 at 14:19:03, subject to the Cambridge