Benefield: 90-year-old Santa Rosa woman says ‘yes’ to zipline adventure

If Carmen Taylor’s palms were sweating, you’d never know.

Hands encased in large leather and cotton gloves, Taylor, 90, grabbed onto the small handlebar that dangled at eye level.

Reading glasses — she’d forgotten her long-range lenses — rested on her nose. From under her white helmet, wisps of her gray hair poked out above her pink turtleneck and gray jacket.

At her side, Bruce Consuegra, sweep guide with Sonoma Zipline Adventures, instructed her to lean back and step away from the platform.

The platform, wide enough for perhaps two people, wrapped around a massive redwood. Taylor was some 250 feet above the forest floor.

Consuegra affixed the final safety carabiner to the mount holding Taylor’s handlebars.

“Enjoy,” he said as he stepped away from Taylor.

“Okey dokey,” Taylor said.

And then she rocked back, lifted her feet and zipped away on a line stretching down into a sea of redwoods and Douglas fir trees.

She was out of sight within seconds, but the whir of the handlebars on cable indicated she was still midflight.

On Wednesday, Taylor became one of the oldest people to run the course at Sonoma Zipline Adventures in Occidental, a nonprofit organization that operates to support the education works of Alliance Redwoods Outdoor Education programs.

“I’m a doer. I like to do things,” Taylor said.

She paused.

“And sometimes I get myself into trouble.”

But Taylor had no trouble climbing stairs to reach platforms, crossing rope bridges swaying in the wind hundreds of feet above the ground or rocketing from one redwood to another while fastened into a harness.

In fact, she laughed easily and beamed a broad smile the entire afternoon.

“It’s a lot easier once you get started,” she said. “You talk to yourself, ‘This is life, others have done it and survived and enjoyed it and lived to tell.’”

The adventure came to be on somewhat of a whim.

Taylor lives at Solstice Senior Living in Santa Rosa where Melissa Morrissey is activities director.

It’s part of Morrissey’s job to find so-called bucket list items she can help pull off for residents.

When the notion of ziplining was raised, Taylor didn’t pause.

There is a reason for that.

Just two years ago, Taylor was scheduled to travel to Costa Rica with a friend. On the itinerary for that trip?

Yep, ziplining.

But her travel companion had a fall and that trip was canceled.

“It is obviously one of the things I was interested in, but I didn’t want to go by myself,” she said.

Enter Morrissey.

Morrissey, along with Taylor’s son, Brian, signed on as co-conspirators. All three were booked into the most extreme session offered at Sonoma Zipline Adventures: The Tree Tops Tour, where people reach 40 mph and soar 250 off the ground.

“I was never thinking that I would have a chance to do it, so I guess when Melissa asked, it must have been in my self-conscious,” she said.

But before all this came to pass, Taylor had to get a once-over from a doctor.

She passed that exam with flying colors. No going back now.

Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon when Taylor was attached to a series of cables affixed to a soaring redwood tree.

I asked how she was feeling as the tree swayed in the wind.

“A little excited, but at the same time wondering if I should have thought about it a little bit more,” she said.

She let out a laugh.

Moments later, she stepped off the platform and flew.

The way Taylor tells it, she’s always been a bit of an adventurer.

The youngest of eight kids born on the island of Guam, Taylor remembers being dared by her 13-year-old brother to jump on a bull’s back.

She was 10.

“We had a bull and he dared me to ride it,” she said. “I was supposed to jump from the branch of the tree onto the bull. I did, but the bull ran under a tree and I hit the branch. As a result, I have a really bad shoulder now. I’m paying for it.”

“So I guess I have done stupid things since I was 7 or 8,” she said.

As a child in Guam, Taylor and her family endured the yearslong Japanese occupation of the island during World War II.

Her family home was converted to stables and later a school, she said.

“It was fear, deprivation and brutality,” Taylor said. “I think it makes me wonder why human beings would do the things they do to each other. I just couldn’t understand that.”

After high school, Taylor left Guam and enrolled in college in Ohio. There she met Keith Taylor.

Both scholars, Taylor and her husband traveled the world. They lived in Brazil, Venezuela and England. They visited nations throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean.

“My husband and I traveled a lot,” she said. “We would do spur of the moment things, and sometimes we would find ourselves in a tight place.”

Together, they visited all 50 states.

In 1985, Keith got a job at Sonoma State University. Taylor joined him in Sonoma County the following year.

Keith Taylor, Carmen’s companion in travels and adventures all over the world, died five years ago.

She thought of him on Wednesday, as she checked yet another item off her personal bucket list.

“I guess the only sorry feeling I have right now is that my husband wasn’t here to do it with me,” she said. “Although I probably would have said yes before he would.”

She’s laughing.

Seems she’s just one of those “Yes” people.

Yes to life, yes to travel, yes to adventure.

Morrissey, for one, had no doubt Taylor would say yes to ziplining. Morrissey has been watching Taylor in action for some time.

She runs the bridge group at Solstice, attends daily fitness classes and volunteers with a Catholic Charities program in which she calls on homebound seniors suffering from loneliness and isolation.

“I’m more nervous than she is,” Morrissey said before the two went high into the trees.

But Taylor did, in fact, admit to a few jitters. But they were short-lived and wholly washed away by the thrill of the ride.

When she reached the platform after the fourth zip — the longest and most spectacular on the tour — Taylor already felt a sense of satisfaction.

“I’ve done it,” she said, making a fist. “I’m doing it and I’m glad I did. I dared myself, I accomplished it and I’m happy.”

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.