This past weekend while at Lake Norfolk I conquered a life long demon. One that has haunted me since I was in elementary school. It had to have been before my 10th birthday because my youngest brother, Chase, wasn’t born and he’s 10 years younger than me. So my best estimate is that I was 8 years old when this event occurred.

We’ll go with the Summer of 1990, my family went to Lake Norfolk. We spent a lot of time at the lake in the summer. We would do all sorts of stuff from grilling out, swimming, boat riding, skiiing, tubing and even cliff jumping. There are a bunch of random cliffs at Norfolk and depending on the water level could range from 5 to over 50 feet. One of the more well known cliffs is called “Big E”.

One day we boated over towards “Big E” and I decided that I was gonna jump off of it. My dad and I jump off the boat and swim over to the base of the rock. One thing you don’t really think about is actually having to climb up these rocks before you jump. We start climbing, me first with my dad behind me to make sure I don’t fall. As I get to the top of the cliff I look out over Lake Norfolk and realize this thing is a lot higher up than I originally thought. Just guessing I’d say it was probably around 50ft high. Well 50ft looks like more like a 100ft when you're standing on top and looking out over the water.

So there we were, standing on top of “Big E” looking out of over the water and I’m starting to freak out. I immediately start having second thoughts and want to climb back down. That’s when my dad says “You climbed up here and the only way you’re getting down is by jumping.” and he was dead serious. My dad wasn’t about to let me climb down because he said it was to dangerous. Now I’m freaking out even more.

While we were standing up there other people climb up and jump down. Some have 2nd thoughts as well, but they all eventually jump. Except me and my dad. He’s standing there giving instructions “Don’t look over. Just walk up, jump, put your arms to your side and keep your legs together”. This went on for a few hours, no kidding, a few hours. Just me and my dad standing up there with me frozen and scared to death. To make things even worse there was a crowd of boats and people in the water watching. You tend to get an audience when an 8 year old is standing on a 50ft cliff for 3 hours. Some of the people down below are in their boats yelling “Come on, jump”.

Finally after 3 hours of standing on top of “Big E” (admittedly crying at some points) I managed to walk up and jump. That was 20 years ago and I hadn’t been on top of “Big E” ever since. Sure, I had lots of opportunities, but I always remembered the time I spent 3 hours up there and figured that was plenty of time spent on top of “Big E” and said no thanks. But this past weekend was a different story.

We took the boat over towards “Big E” and somebody said: “Jake, you wanna jump off Big E?” and I replied with “Yeah, I think so”. I jumped out of the boat, climbed up to the top of “Big E”, looked over the lake, walked up to the edge and jumped. All in a matter of 5 minutes. It took me longer to climb up than it did to jump off. After jumping I came up out of the water and swam over to the boat, where my dad was sitting and yelled (In my best Jeff Daniels - Harry from Dumb & Dumber voice) “And I Totally Redeemed Myself!”. Of course he got a big kick out of it and laughed pretty hard before he said: “Yes, you did Jake. Yes, you did”.

For as long as I live I will never forget the only two times I have ever climbed “Big E”, especially the first.

- Jacob

As a side note I thought I would mention that the water at Lake Norfolk is really high right now. So “Big E” was probably only 20ft high when I jumped off this weekend :) 50ft jump > 20ft jump