I’ve been hosting family and friends recently. When my son Josh and his girlfriend Jessica came to Puerto Rico for a visit last weekend, we went to the Toroverde Nature Adventure Park in Orocovis, a community perched high up in the mountains in the center of the island. Toroverde really doesn’t offer much in terms of “nature.” By my definition, it doesn’t really provide an “adventure” either. But what it does offer is ziplining. And it does that very well. In addition to its Puerto Rico location, Toroverde operates another zipline facility in Ras al-Khaimah, one of the seven emirates that comprise the UAE.
I was impressed by the operation and its staff. They projected competence, assurance, and fun in well-nigh perfect proportions. The effect was to calm the jitters of the nervous while nurturing the spirit of the fun-seekers.
It was a fun, almost relaxing experience. We did seven different zipline runs, each one of which was a little bigger than the one before. I didn’t feel any fear, just the thrill of riding down a wire hundreds of feet above the valleys below.
I began chatting with one of the other members of our group. She was a fellow motorcyclist who favors big boulevard cruisers. Then I noticed that she wore a bracelet that said “Pulse.” She’d said she was from Florida. I put two and two together and asked her if the bracelet was from the nightclub where the massacre happened two years ago. Yes, she said, and in fact she was one of the DJs who was working there on that awful night when 49 people were killed and 53 were wounded.
I was momentarily dumbstruck. What do you say to someone who’s lived through something like that? I told her about the vigil that took place in Toledo, Ohio and how profoundly the shooting had affected my circle of friends. She told me that many Puerto Ricans were among the Pulse victims and that there is a monument to them somewhere in San Juan. I plan to go searching for it.
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