Do I start with bungee jumping off Victoria Falls, walking on the bottom of the Columbia River, hiking to Machu Picchu, or 30 years of sobriety?

That´s the embarrassment of riches I´m confronted with as I write the story of Mary Jane McN. She´s done it all. But I think the place to start is with her hard-won sobriety.

Mary Jane hadn´t eaten anything but soup for six months and thought, probably rightly, that she was dying. She´d been visiting her mother in Portland, where she was born, and her appearance so alarmed her mother that she offered to send her to a treatment center.

She came home to Bellevue "with this terrible premonition" she was dying. Down on her knees praying for a way out, she got up and tried to look up the phone number of a treatment center. Instead, she saw the Alcoholics Anonymous listing, "and being Scotch, I thought that would be cheaper, so I called them. I have no memory of who I talked to, but the next day I got a 12 Step call from this gravelly voice that wanted to come over right away. I demurred ´cause I had to meet my daughter for lunch.

"That was some lunch. I was shaking so badly I couldn´t get the fork to my mouth. At home, I would have put my face in the plate, but I couldn´t do that with my daughter there. But, to say the least, we didn´t tarry too long over that meal.

"When I got home, the couple who´d called me the night before was waiting for me. As they whisked me off to a meeting in Issaquah, I said goodbye to life, good music, and handsome men. That was July 25, 1972, and even though I thought the people there were ridiculous, that was my last drinking day. I´m not like that, I thought, ´til I heard a woman tell a story that was just like mine. I managed to smile a bit at that point, but I could not say I was an alcoholic.

"Instead, Mike M. and Lenore, who´d made that first 12 Step call, introduced me as an alcoholic ´cause I wouldn´t say it. After that, I kept going to meetings and met some wonderful women there. Within two weeks, I was appointed coffee maker, but that didn´t last ´cause I used way too much coffee and nobody could drink it, it was so strong.

"It was decided I´d be a better literature chairman, so I doled the material out and read it too. Good learning experience.

"Eight months into sobriety, I knew I needed a job. I applied to a drydock company, but they told me they weren´t hiring just then. How to handle disappointment? Why, with a drink, of course. I poured myself a stiff one, and just then the phone rang. I was needed on a 12 Step call. ´My God, they´ve got television,´ I thought. But I poured the drink down the sink and went on the call-by myself. I didn´t know then you needed a partner for 12 Step calls. When I called home, my husband said the drydock company had called back and wanted me to start Monday. I stayed for 25 years as an expediter before retiring.

"I often wonder where my path would have gone if I´d taken that drink."

From then on, Mary Jane made many 12 Step calls, and only drew the line once-when the caller asked her to clean her house. One of her calls was a woman who demanded that she come over immediately. Mary Jane asked how long she´d been drinking. "Forty five years," was the reply. "Well, you can wait 45 minutes," Mary Jane said. At the meeting, the lady asked if all everybody did was sit around and talk. "Don´t you ever play cards?" On the way home, she vomited in Mary Jane´s car, but she got sober, and now has 25 years in the program.

Now working full time and 12 Stepping, she also took on many assignments in the management structure of AA, culminating with a year as chairman of Intergroup in 1982.. It finally got to the point that her boss said he wished she´d work as hard at her job as she did for AA. She pulled back after that, but meanwhile had started a noon meeting for employees. "In two weeks, there were 10 attending, and it grew to 25. There was lots of new sobriety through that meeting."

Angus L., who joined in the interview with Mary Jane, remarked on what a powerful influence she had been on him. He came into the program a year after Mary did, and they worked together in many ways.

"I was bragging about my service work once," Angus recalled, and Mary said ´Let´s face it. We´re all power-hungry people.´ That gave me something to think about.."

Mary Jane´s husband was critically ill during this period, and she spoke with deep gratitude of the love and support she got from AA friends during his final illness.

Her drinking had undermined her relationship with her son and daughter, Mary Jane recalled, and at first sobriety didn´t make any difference. "They didn´t like me any better sober than drunk." Happily, that´s all changed. "It took years of patience and persistence and love to rebuild our relationship. I didn´t slam any doors, and I tried hard not to be judgmental. They both think I´m pretty special now. My son´s a cop. He sends his friends to me. And I have a grandson who´s Phi Beta Kappa."

Mary Jane has always liked living on the edge, actually and figuratively. Her stroll down the bottom of the Columbia under 30 feet of water in an old-fashioned diving suit occurred when she was still working and drinking in Portland. Three years ago, on a trip to New Zealand, she went to the original bungee jumping bridge and took the plunge. After she´d climbed the 87 steps back to the jumping off point, she asked the inventor of bungee jumping if his mother had eaten Mexican jumping beans while she was pregnant.

Having learned the craft of bungee jumping, Mary Jane did a repeat jump off Victoria Falls in Africa. Why bungee jumping? "What is it they say about mountains? Because they´re there." Seventy years old at the time-she´s 73 now-her next project is to climb 12.388-foot Mt. Fuji in Japan. Then there´s a helicopter trip to the Arctic Circle to match the one she´s already taken to the Antarctic. She and four other world travelers met on an ice floe there for an AA meeting.

"I´ve always been adventurous and enjoyed living on the edge," Mary Jane said. Fuji won´t be her first high mountain. She´s already climbed Mt. Rainier and Mt. Hood. In Peru, she took a cruise on the Amazon and went to Cuzco before hiking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu On the Inca trail, a fellow traveler asked her if she knew she was standing in the exact spot where Shirley McClain had had her first out-of-body experience.

One of her few failures was the attempt to climb Ayers Rock in central Australia. She and several others in the party passed out in the 125 degree heat and gave it up. Another downer was her visit to the town of Alice Springs in the middle of that vast country, made famous by the Masterpiece Theater series, "A Town Like Alice." "It was depressing," Mary Jane said. "The aboriginals drinking and living on Big Macs. I can´t tell you how bad it was." (Editor´s note: sounds like Fourth Avenue in Anchorage. Indigenous people´s alcoholism is a universal tragedy.)

Twelve Stepping remains a big part of Mary´s Jane´s life. She´ll be chairing the panel discussion on the 12th Step at the International Women´s Conference Feb. 14-16 at the Doubletree Inn here.

"We need to strengthen and rejuvenate 12 Step work," Mary Jane said. "I hope to see a lot of you at the conference as we work to do just that."

Interviewed by Angus L. and Dick S. Written by Dick S.