Flying without an engine: 2004

“It sounds as if you really need to go and do this hanggliding thing...,” the poet said, lounging on the Hilton sheets, his head at my feet. Watching his intense eyes flick to the bedside alarm and back, knowing that this was the first meaningful thing he’d said to me in a long weekend of evasion, knowing I would not be coming back to Miami even if he asked me again, I decided he was right. I had been needing that hanggliding thing for a long time, now worse than ever. I needed to start my life.
I had lied to my not quite significant other as to my destination that weekend, informing him that I was off to San Antonio to my sister’s, when what I really craved was a lost weekend with a guy who had written some mean poetry, including one on the Fassbinder movie, “Aguirre, the Wrath of God.” Mind you I had never seen the film, but his verbal somersaults had enticed me into sex the weekend of an old and mutual friend’s wedding and we had kept up a correspondence and limited physical relationship the ensuing two years. This would be the last weekend. The physical excitement had gone; the mental excitement withered in disparate personalities. But, I still thought he had rare insights; I was ready to fly.
When I first read an article about hanggliding in 1973, I was 14 years old and sitting in the Sturgis, Mississippi, high school library, flipping through Popular Mechanics. It opened to photos of a man floating gracefully above the landscape as I had soared silently, overhead, in dreams, only to awaken, disappointed, squarely in bed. I had leapt from our roof with a gathered sheet and old umbrellas and had even, being a Southern Baptist, tried the “faith can move mountains” trick. I never quite generated enough faith to become airborne and decided it represented my poor standing with God (a result of my heathen belief in evolution as a real option).
So, when I read that article, in my usual solitary, lunchtime browsing something in the eternal jigsaw of the universe clicked into place and I knew I would, someday, learn to fly one of those things. I started saving for a pair that summer, almost accumulating the five hundred dollars needed to buy the kit advertised in the back of the same magazine (which I filched and kept under my bed for years).
It is, perhaps, fortunate that my parents divorced about the time I had enough and that I used the money, instead, to pay for early college courses at MSU, just eighteen miles up the road. Supposing I had sent off for the kit, and supposing I had assembled it correctly, and even supposing I was able to convince my parents the thing was safe to fly, there were then and are now very few hangglider pilots in Mississippi, fewer instructors, and no mountains. I might have flown somewhere, but I might also have become the first hanggliding fatality in that state.
All through my poverty-stricken college years at Mississippi State University and the subsequent penury of medical school in Jackson (run by that other university in Mississippi) I had periodically pulled out the old article, promising myself. I had heard nothing of the sport in years and wasn’t even sure it still existed until I mentioned hanggliding to a fellow classmate named (no, really) Richard Birdsong. In the early eighties, he had gone to a hanggliding school near Chattanooga, TN, on a college adventure weekend. He knew it was on Lookout Mountain and he thought it was still extant. However, this was medical school when one is not permitted to have aspirations beyond a shower and occasional sleep.
I went into a surgical residency on a whim, but a time-consuming one. Then, in the fall of my third year of residency, my father died, on the 25th anniversary of JFK’s assassination. I thought I had been prepared, but the week after the funeral in San Antonio, I took a few days off to cry and stare at the walls, thinking of dreams lost and dreams forgone, then called the Chattanooga Tourist Bureau.
Yes, they did know of hanggliding off Lookout Mountain, but the person speaking to me didn’t have an address. Instead she gave me a number for High Adventure Mountain Sports at Raccoon Mountain. I was thinking it was a darned elusive sport. Leon answered, but all he had was a flight simulator (a hangglider on a string). I didn’t want a thrill ride; I wanted the real thing. Did he, perhaps, know anyone who gave lessons? Oh, sure, Matt Tabor, up on Lookout Mountain; did I want the number? Yes, Leon, I very much did. (I now publicly thank him, though I’ve yet to meet the man.)
I hesitated a few moments, knowing I was about to commit myself to something irrevocable. The call was answered, briskly, “Lookout Mountain Flight Park, Joanne speaking, can I help you?” Yes, you can. Do you fly in January? Sure, they taught daily and flew whenever the winds permitted. I quickly booked my boyfriend and myself for lessons. Where had I seen their ad, please? Nowhere; did they have ads? I’d only been looking for them half my life.
So, finally, and before I reached the dread age of thirty, before I was too old, whatever age that was, before I died, like my father, with few dreams fulfilled, I was going to be a hangglider pilot. It was raining in Mobile when my less than excited boyfriend and I left and it was still raining when we got to Chattanooga seven hours and several arguments later. Along the way, amidst the stiff silences, I had deciphered the words to Mike and the Mechanics “The Living Years” and it seemed appropriate theme music, seven weeks after my father’s death.
It was only cold that first Monday morning, not below freezing as it would be subsequently, and we became lost in rising mist on the way to the ridge-top shop, arriving at the appointed nine o’clock. I remember watching a video about assembling the glider and launching it -- simple. The same Joanne, less brisk, more pleasant in person, signed us up, took my credit card, and handed me a closely typed sheet listing many possible ways to mangle and or kill myself in the sport and absolving them of all responsibility for my idiocy or ineptitude. She couldn’t have scared me off, at that point, with bloody film footage, though I’m not certain Alf felt the same.
Dave, a tall geologist on sabbatical from the oil fields of Texas, was our first instructor. He took us out for ground school to the training site, among the foothills near Trenton, GA. There we ran across the winter brown fields with the gliders, learning to balance them on our shoulders. My glider lifted off, trying to fly of its own volition; I imagined it dragging me skyward. Even Alf, more enamored of powered flight, seemed happy in the brisk air, the winter sunshine pouring on us as we ran like children in a playground -- a little embarrassed to be in student mode again.
That afternoon we went to the shop to watch the “real” pilots launch, and Alf chatted with them easily, learning from them, while I, jealous, stood to the back, labeled “the girlfriend.” It was not their fault; I was self-conscious and hadn’t learned yet that the formal lessons are not the whole of a sport, that the talking afterwards, the bits one picks up chatting with the ‘pros’ and the ‘old-timers,’ the stories, tall tales, and myths of a sport or profession, are handed down this way. I watched them launch, walking down the concrete slab set at what seemed a precipitous angle over the cliff. The panorama of the valley spread below me as I huddled on the cold ledge, and these men, and sometimes women, dove over the edge that frightened me, flinging themselves into a void, trusting on wings of aluminum and thin dacron to bear them up, to catch the wind and take them to the clouds. In the brisk January winds I saw these things fly for the first time in my life, saw them lifted like an elevator over our heads in the moment they twisted free of the wirecrew, saw them taken straight up into the sky. They hovered there, dipping down to flaunt their wings at us or whoop a greeting. They were chilled but cheerful, taking their pleasure up there as if born to swim in air. I envied them and lusted for their skills. The sport was more than I had imagined. I wanted in.
I don’t remember if it was the second morning when we got our first flights from the bunny hill, but I remember the first time I was airborne, really being held up by nothing but air swirling under my wings, feeling my feet lift free of the brown-stubbled ground. It was a giddy experience, like a sudden lift at the bottom of the roller coaster, when your stomach floats up, but longer, and I chortled like some kid. It was also addictive. I progressed rapidly the first couple of days, my instructors pleased with my energy; mostly, the female students they saw were dragged there by overenthusiastic boyfriends. Alf fell into the “dragged girlfriend” category. He sprained his ankle the third day, thankfully, I think.
The weather turned viciously cold, freezing the wet ground, biting my hands and feet, turning the reminders of the cows who shared our training field into stones along my bumpy path. The cold made it difficult to warm up and loosen, but I progressed until the morning I, too, was injured. Alf's training video memorializes the exact sequence when I tried to break my neck.
There I am, a lump dressed for the arctic conditions, trudging with Greg Ball up the hill after several clumsy landings trying to avoid the frozen over cow wallow at the bottom of the hill. Finally he told me to “flare,” or stall the glider to make it stop, as if the puddle wasn’t there -- ignore it. I didn’t flare, or not hard enough, and rolled onto the ice. Unfortunately, the wheels broke through the ice and locked and my momentum flung me forward, swinging me in my harness like a bell-clapper against the keel, my neck bent at a ninety-degree angle. I dropped to my knees and stayed there, in the icy water, testing my extremities individually for any sign of numbness or weakness. I heard both Alf and Greg shout my name as they tumbled down the hill, but I was too breathless to do more than say softly, “I’m okay.”
I got up; and, more afraid of the fear than any injury, I insisted on one more flight. This happened on Friday. We had to leave Sunday after class for the long drive back to Mobile; it might be months before we could return. So, battered, I returned the next two days, unfruitfully, and left feeling deflated.
Residencies, especially surgical ones, allow little time off, and though Alf and I stole off on the Easter weekend to take another lesson, there was no progress and I became discouraged. When I left my residency and took a job as an emergency department physician, my off time was my own. Still trying to include Alf in my vision of flight, I booked a commercial flight to Chattanooga, figuring the long drive gave us too much time to argue. But, our relationship was strained to the maximum in the restricted spaces of trips and hotel rooms; at home we even had separate bedrooms. Togetherness was not us, not confined to our hotel by Hurricane Hugo’s dismal weather. No aviation occurred that weekend except that by the flight crew who piloted the planes we took.
I began to think I was something of a jinx when I came back to fly three weeks later and the San Francisco earthquake struck. It rained all that long week in October, breaking only long enough for a lesson here, a practice flight there. I was close, so close to leaving the little hill and graduating to the “big hill,” the 120-foot slope that was the next step to nirvana. There our more advanced brothers and sisters cavorted their gliders effortlessly, slipping gracefully from the face of their steeper hill, looking like moths when they crawled slowly up to fly again. I watched the younger and more athletic men follow the instructors’ directions exactly while I struggled, hunting for the combination of moves that would free me from the earth. I left that week, not sure that I would be back, feeling myself lacking some ingredient necessary in a hangglider pilot, feeling too old.
All the year and more I sat out, the hanggliding dream recurred to me regularly, beckoning. I would promise, “Yes, of course...someday, soon.” Then, the next fall, I was able to start writing again. Stymied by years spent in medical school and residency I had hesitated for months. I couldn’t make myself sit down to the keyboard, preferring to travel, play with computers, reread old things I had written in college. With friends’ help, I began to see that time of transition as a legitimate time of reflection, and, with nervous energy dissipated, I was able to start writing again. The poet’s question convinced me that the time to fly was now, though I had long since passed the imagined age limit of thirty. In March 1991, I rejoined the battle, beginning the summer of my hanggliding adventure when anything was possible and everyone was kind.
Returning was embarrassing. I had to explain to the other students the level of my skills. I had to admit that I had tried and dropped out, that I already had forty flights, that I flew in the face of the school’s advertisement to have one off the mountain in a week to ten days. That I was, bluntly, a failure. But, there was something else, something I hadn’t had the last time I came that rainy October week -- patience with the process. I was able, for the first time in my thirty-one restless years, to enjoy the journey. “Zen and the Art of Hanggliding,” I would murmur to myself whenever the old chafing arose.
I arrived early enough to walk the mile-long muddy road to the training site, leaving my new truck, bought specifically for glider transport, at the locked gate. I’d revel in the cool and the silence, look around the valley so thick with fog that it precluded launching from the little hill; I’d breath in the moisture and listen to the crows call across to each other. Then the other students would arrive and we’d break up the silence, chattering nervously as we assembled the practice gliders, gentle old things, patched and rebuilt countless times, forgiving of our gaucheries.
The four instructors are archetypes now, and the immediate sensation of each is lost. Christian, the chief instructor, was a quiet, moody man, generous in material things since he valued them so little, always having just the right words to make you smile at your own failures, quick with encouragement. Ricky, a rich man’s son from Puerto Rico, was full of ego and suggestion, so very sure of his own skills, so very full of words. Jim was fourteen forever, like a big puppy, energetic, helpful, chagrined at his own social failures, ever the optimist, not taking anything seriously. Rex was here for only one reason, to fly. The instructing was his support for an addictive habit, and he was easily the most relaxed of the teachers. He was “cool.”
I found them all attractive, and I’d be lying if I said it had never occurred to me to sleep with any of them. However, there was Alf, still a lump on my horizon, and there was flying and I’ve never cared to mix my obsessions. I dismiss it easily now, but I struggled with it all that summer, debating with myself continuously over Alf and how we stood, since he never engaged in the conversations I had with him. A love triangle would have ripped the peace of the place from me.
This time, because I didn’t beat myself over my failures, didn’t berate myself every time an instructor made a suggestion or correction, there was a lack of mental pain, of the need to please. I was only there for myself. Hanggliding was for me alone and no one would die and the world would still turn if I took six months or six years to learn to fly. I savored that thought on sweaty mornings.
Physically, it was a different matter -- there was plenty of pain. At first I pulled the gliders up and down the hills laboriously, cursing men and their muscles and wishing I’d had the foresight to take up weight lifting or running. After four or five flights and climbs, I became too tired to respond to my instructors, and would have to call it a morning. Then I discovered another use for men. BJ, airbum about town, permanent camper in the LZ, was a willing packhorse and accessory instructor for small fees, happy for the beer money. Though I had learned to carry the Raven properly now, balanced on my shoulder tips, I found BJ’s sturdy back and encouragement a blessing.
By early May I had loosened my tight grip, allowing the glider to fly, and began to understand the mechanics of launching, flying straight, and flaring to land gently on my feet. When I returned on Memorial Day weekend there were a dozen of us on the little hill, waiting for the rain to stop, and then awaiting our turns. It seemed that I would live forever on that little hill. The next morning was no better and so, when Rex offered to teach an evening class, I leapt at the chance, convinced it was the only way I’d get enough time on one of the gliders that weekend to graduate. My previous equanimity vanished; I was ready to fly. That afternoon I could make no error; flight after flight was perfect. When I came to my fifth in a row I was afraid I’d stumble at the finish. Rex, understanding, suggested I wait until the morning, but I chanced it and won, hooting and cheering as Rex called down, “You’re cleared!”
That night I brought the instructors four six-packs of beer, per custom, and ended up as another of Christian’s houseguests. The four of us sprawled around his trailer in the landing field as they regaled me with hanggliding stories and exaggerations and lies while I listened respectfully, soaking it in, proud of their approval, beginning to feel like a ‘real’ hangglider pilot.
The next morning I went to the big hill, exhausted from endless lessons, hungover, tired from poor sleep in a strange place, and tried to break my neck a second time. I clutched the downtubes, pulling the glider’s nose down, and dove over the crest of the hill, dragging along the ground until I hit a road carved from the side of the slope and ski-jumped to land nose-first. I remembered Christian’s warning, “When a crash is inevitable, go fetal.” I did and it worked, though, once again, it was my neck that was injured and I gingerly tested each limb. Almost as I hit, Ricky, my instructor, was there with me, checking me over. Then he made me sit in the shade with BJ until the shaking passed. I could not leave, not like that, so I dragged the wounded glider over and disassembled it to show everyone that I was functional.
I would leave for Mobile after morning classes and if I went away on that note, they’d make me return to the little hill. I wasn’t sure they wouldn’t do that anyway in the morning, and I practiced being gracefully resigned. I filled myself with ibuprofen and hid in the hotel room’s hot shower all day, unwilling to show myself and hear the good-natured jibes. In the morning I felt bruised but knew I needed to launch from the big hill. I sought Christian and timidly asked if I could. He measured me for a long moment, then said, “Sure.” I waited for the other students to go off ahead of me, though being the first with my glider up the hill I had the right to precede them. I was more wary of my reactions than the slope. I kept repeating, “It’s just a hill, just like the little hill. The glider doesn’t know it’s any higher.” Finally, after three other students, I went up to launch. Christian, instead of a reprimand, said only, “Let it fly, Jean; it wants to fly.” This was my mantra as I ran down the worn path in the grass toward the edge, thinking mechanically, remembering to smoothly accelerate, relax my hands, keep the nose angle correct, eyes forward, repeating motions I’d performed dozens of times, praying for the glider to capture the air for me. And it did. I was airborne, hanging four stories above the field, time passing infinitely slowly as my shadow ran through the uncut grass to my left, the wind indicator in front, my target, languorously approaching in the silence, barely stirring in the breeze. Then I was skimming the ground, my toes hitting mown stubble, and I threw my hands up in a victorious flare and settled to my feet. The cheers from behind me were delicious.
I had four more perfect flights that morning before leaving for Mobile. I felt I’d been given a medal when Christian said, “I’m glad you didn’t let the hill win.”
The camaraderie of the big hill was different from that on the little hill. Here were the “serious” ones, the ones who’d stuck it out and meant to finish, not to get a picture of themselves “hanggliding” from the little hill to show their friends, to check hanggliding off their list of “accomplishments.” It was a weekly picnic on the top -- we shared bottled water, bug repellent, sunblock, muddy harnesses, stinking sweat-soaked helmets, and gleanings of advice. We had more time to converse since we had more time “hang-waiting” due to the orientation of the slope, and we were no longer strangers, silent competitors, but colleagues and buddies.
There were also those among us who had already had their “first mountain” flights, but needed to come back for a refresher after being gone two or three weeks. No one was free of the threat of the big hill until they had several hours flying time. We picked the mountain pilots’ brains for details of their first flights. We asked again and again, “What was it like?” as if they were Marco Polo returned to Venice. What we got was the inarticulate descriptions of the first astronauts, “Oh, it was great!” Jim, the instructor most recently graduated to the mountain, had characterized it as, “Better than sex.”
“Second time sex,” he amended.
Because we had distinct tasks, the early weeks on the big hill passed swiftly. We had to turn the glider toward specific targets that represented different angles, then level out, fly straight, and land on our feet. The first angles were simply forty-five degrees, little challenge, but the next task required a sharp ninety-degree turn with “coordination,” a technique to minimize the glider “slipping” sidewise through the air and losing valuable altitude. I had no problem with this assignment either. Then came the double or linked forty-fives and nineties where we had to perform successive turns and land level. The “big” hill seemed to shrink. These tasks required faster reflexes than I possessed. I began to feel the old frustration by the third weekend I spent on the first of the two tasks, not helped by contrary winds that blew “tail,” or over the back, for the big hill. This meant I had to wait longer for lulls in which to launch, had less altitude and, therefore, less time, in which to execute my turns.
We began to mutter darkly about a virgin sacrifice to the wind gods, if we could find one. My only comfort was a selfish delight in anyone else’s difficulties. I was not the only one to feel clumsy. Three of us formed a chorus on the hill of “permanent students,” a title that, like an ethnic slur, was only funny within the group.
By dent of obstinacy, and not by patience, did I finally complete the double forty-fives, only to struggle with the next. I began to lose my serenity, my pseudo-Zen, as I saw the goal so close, just beyond my fingertips, and the baked summer greens of the valley no longer distracted me when I just missed a flare. Linked nineties, abetted by southerly winds, loomed like a wall beyond which I could see the mountain. I was ready for the mountain, I knew it, and it was maddening to have the forces of nature, and your instructors' particularity, stand in the way. I cried often, frustrated tears spilling silently, mixed with sweat, as I trudged the worn dirt path to the big hill. BJ followed with my glider, trying to think of something helpful he hadn’t already said.
And another Sunday rolled around, another next-to-last day of lessons; even if I finished the hill, there’d be no time to fly from the mountain. I woke late and disgusted, sore from yesterday’s unproductive evening class, with no time left to shower or more than brush my teeth at the outdoor faucet before setting off, dirty, hungry, and uncaffeinated, for class.
I arrived to find Janet, a fellow permanent hillmate, angry because another student had refused to share a glider with her, a definite breach of etiquette. We sat up top and commiserated with each other as the fog clung damply. When the wind finally developed to clear it at eight, it was our old friend the southwest tail. I got off a couple of worthless flights and then closed down, disassembling our glider. As I made for my truck, however, I noticed that three of the remaining gliders were launching and the wind had settled to light and variable from the west -- doable. I was tired and I was hungry, but I was determined to get off that blighted hill that weekend. So, I threw the glider back together, dragged myself up the hill and managed three more linked nineties, none perfect, all acceptable. Then I went back to do my “speed run”-- the easiest task -- and flubbed it. Class was over.
I knew that in the morning I would clear, that I would do fine, and I was cheered, but it was an incomplete victory. There was no afternoon class so I couldn’t clear that afternoon, and I wouldn’t have time to fly from the ramp tomorrow before I returned to Mobile. Since I wouldn’t be back in the Christian-mandated four days, those ogres disguised as instructors would require me to warm-up again on the big hill before I could fly off the mountain. And I didn’t trust the southwest wind not to reappear and confine me to the big hill all weekend, again. It was an unpromising situation. I felt subdued, not elated, as I drove up the mountain to the shop to take my “Hang II” test on the minute possibility that I could fly tomorrow. I made myself not hope, willing away anticipation so that I wouldn’t have to deal with the disappointment, deflecting the other students’ congratulations.
That evening I watched the “real” pilots launch, a little hungrily, thinking to each in turn, “I’ll fly as well as you someday, just watch.” I wished I could show off for Christian’s “tourons,” the people who came to gawk. Some of them came in wonder, staring at the rising gliders in desire. Many, however, stood breathless behind the fence or, when they saw that people didn't routinely stumble over the edge, on the rock ledge itself, awaiting the launches, certain of a crash, shivering with an anticipatory horror.
That night I sat under the pavilion in the landing zone, near my tent, with the remainder of the visiting pilots and Christian. We drank beer and stared at the brightly lit sky, the full moon staring back at us. We joked about night flights and I pretended I didn’t care when they told me it might be possible to launch after lessons, but there was doubt in their voices; the winds became too boisterous for beginners after ten. I pretended I didn’t care, though they were being kind, because disappointment would hurt and I was too heart-tired, too frayed with the wanting, to be graceful in frustration.
The next morning was foggy and gray and the valley was slow to lose its shroud. We camped on the hilltop and I hoped I’d not repeat yesterday’s disappointing flight. Finally it cleared enough for the instructor to see us land, and I launched into the gray stuff, stepping into the twilight zone, flying straight and fast, landing on one knee. There was no answering shout from Christian clearing me, so I climbed back up to hear his verdict. Christian’s mood was not good. He’d had two students in a row flub their launches, one almost repeating my disaster on the big hill; but he told me to go to the shop and see if Buzz would launch me. I left him shaking his head and muttering, “Someone left the brain-suck machine plugged in at the bottom of the hill.”
Inside I felt a pleasant humming, not bouncing joy, as I’d expected. It was as if I did not dare believe that I, clumsy, unathletic I, was going to run off the fearsome ramp and fly to the LZ 1340 feet below, on my own. Christian had, several times, offered to take me on a tandem ride, for free, but I always politely rejected the chance. I chose to go on my own the first time; I wanted to fly myself. I flounced into the shop, grinned at Joanne, but asking hesitantly, “I passed; is it too late for me to launch?”
Joanne warmly congratulated me, then said, “Heck no. Go set up.”
I ran out, full of energy, and assembled my glider to an audience of one imported pilot who had not yet flown from Lookout. He asked dozens of questions, mostly aimed at showing his own extensive knowledge, and I tried, helpfully, to answer him, but I was preoccupied and too excited to take him as seriously as he wanted. I assembled my other gear and awaited Buzz, rereading my already memorized handouts, but mainly staring unthinking over the valley, just now being revealed. The mist stayed low, surrounding the foothills, revealing only their tops, and making Lookout Mountain, and the next ridge west, Sand Mountain, look like peninsulas in an icy sea. Finally, Buzz arrived, looked out into the valley and said, “Come on, Jean, we’d better hurry.” I trotted along behind him, remembering his reputation for verbose preflight instructions and reminding myself not to hope; it was almost ten. Buzz is a careful pilot with two decades of experience and he likes to make sure that the students are aware of the dangers; by the time I finished I felt able to handle anything this launch might offer on a sled-run. (Ignorance is bliss.)
Released from the classroom, I raced outside, wriggled into my harness, strapped on my helmet, shouldered my glider, and staggered to the ramp for a “hang-check,” to make certain I was hooked in. I heard Buzz giving me last minute advice, but I was already flying in my head, not afraid, so, when he said, “Take it slow, Jean. Take a deep breath and get balanced, then launch whenever you feel ready; there’s no hurry,” hardly a second passed before I called, “Clear.”
I started my run, unwilling to stand a moment more on the ramp contemplating the long plummet to the valley. As I came to the end of the ramp I expected my stomach to drop, but there was no sense of falling, only of settling into the air. I felt suspended, a thousand feet above the trees; the world below me moved and not I. I looked down repeatedly to see that there was nothing but clean air between the glider and the valley. It was isolation, and freedom. No one could talk to me, reprimand, advise, or demand things of me, not until I landed. I was flying -- I, alone. I dutifully focused my mind on the assigned tasks, designed to keep us aware of the mechanics of flying lest we become mesmerized into forgetting the hard stuff below. I pulled in on the control bar to attain various speeds and tried to find my landmarks as I approached the LZ, but all the while I was thinking to myself, humming to myself, “You did it. You finally, really, eighteen years later, did it,” as treetops below crept backwards and Sand Mountain, across the valley, slowly approached.
It was a pedestrian sled-run of a flight, no excitement anywhere except to the infant pilot, not even the sensation of flying until just before landing when I was low enough to see the tops of sixty foot trees rush by. It was amazing to me and as thrilling as when I first discovered sex. I had the same internal feeling of, “Oh, so this is it. This is it....” In the end I did allow myself to become hypnotized, rolling in on my wheels before I knew I was low enough to flare, but I didn’t care. I had flown and I had landed. I bounced across the LZ in an excess of released tension and sang the long drive back to Mobile.
If I had been consistent and stubborn throughout the spring and summer, faithfully driving to Chattanooga after 24-hour shifts every weekend I was off, then I became slightly obsessed that fall. Any time I wasn’t working I was staring out the windows trying to figure conditions. Clouds and sky became a topic of constant comment. I no longer waited for the weekends, driving up any time I had three days off in a row. I had to return to the hills to clear on my new glider, the work of a long weekend, albeit without BJ’s customary help since he was in the hospital for non-hanggliding related complaints. I developed blisters on my shoulders from carrying the glider up the little hill seven times in one morning, but fortunately found help in the form of two Bills. The first was a marine and new hangglider pilot, returned from the Gulf War, who gratefully toted my glider after I fed him boiled shrimp I had brought from Mobile for the instructors. The second was an Air Force flight instructor from Columbus, MS, also a hangglider pilot, who needed extra beer money. Alf, too, showed up, but things were fraying between us and I stayed in my tent in the LZ, my haven from him and problems in Mobile, while he went to Tiftonia to sleep in the Holiday Inn.
But, the weather gods can be fickle; the flights I managed on my new glider over the next six weeks were few. I developed my hang-waiting skills. I remember one particularly trying weekend at the end of September when I had managed five days off in a row. I arrived to find a storm front, colder than my Mobile wardrobe made comfortable, followed by easterly winds (the wrong direction), followed by winds too brisk for a novice. By the end of it I was exhausted from hoping too long and waiting hours each day on the sunny ramp, staring at the wind indicators, afraid the winds would sneakily decide to accommodate me if I left for an hour. I drove the instructors into hiding with my constant requests that they come out and “check conditions”-- usually no different than they’d been an hour before. Christian labeled me “air-horny.” The punchline came the morning I finally had to leave for work -- the newer mountain pilots launched within the hour. Still, the fall days were a treasure when I did manage a sled-run in the morning. Then I was content to play driver and retrieve Rex and Ricky and other advanced pilots, when they flew cross-country. They, in turn, taught me weather conditions, shared their beer, told me war stories, and made me their “buddy.” I learned to look for wind direction from the clouds, pond ripples, and smoke, to know when a thermal was developing and find it marked by a cumulus puff. It was a hot, vivacious fall full of days spent on dusty launches watching my friends fly. And I was finally able, on my ninth mountain flight, to soar above the ridge.
It was the same weekend I realized that Christian was as fascinated with me as I was with him. We sat up until two that Saturday morning, the twelfth of October, after my usual drive up following a Thursday night on duty. I was so gratified that this quiet man I liked and admired had had similar feelings for me the long summer, hesitant to show it since I was “taken.” We sat outside my tent for hours in the damp air, afraid to go in, still jealous of our reputations, saying everything we’d been thinking those months. Then the all-too-soon morning had me warming up on the hills. I came back for a nap, but Dave Curry, my old instructor, had a bad landing and dislocated his shoulder. I had to take him to the nearest hospital, after a not unexpected failure to reduce it in the LZ.
I was buzzing with exhaustion when we returned late that afternoon, but the winds had picked up and the word among us new mountain pilots was that it was easily ridge-soarable. I drove up the mountain to check, running on epinephrine. A “wonder wind,” smooth soarable air that is God’s gift to the novice hangglider pilot, was brewing and I sought out Matt since all his instructors were at evening classes. He asked me how many flights I’d had, considering. I muttered the miserable number, “Eight.” He said, “Well, you’re a solid pilot, let it wait a little longer to quiet in the LZ and I’ll launch you after six.” I could have kissed him.
I assembled my glider carefully, checking every bolt, watching pilot after pilot lift off from the wirecrew up into the sky and prayed it would continue until I had my chance. At six the wind still blew, inviting me. Since it was my first wire launch, Matt called it for me, telling the fellow pilots who held me down to the ramp to shout “up,” “down,” or “neutral,” depending on what the wings were doing. I stood there with tingling, sweating palms, wondering if I was taking on more than I should, then suddenly letting go, deciding that I had to trust Matt. He wouldn’t let me do this if he thought I wasn’t able. I concentrated hard on the chorus of “up,” “up,” and “strong up,” that surrounded me until Matt called, “Go, Jean!” Suddenly, I was the one on that elevator, the one being carried straight to heaven, swiftly, smoothly, silently. I turned to my left watching the trees on the bluff drift downward, away from me, waving me on. The air was sweet and thick all around me, golden with sunset. I was flying, not falling, actually climbing. I turned when I wanted, went where I wanted, looked on the ground from a height I’d only seen in airplanes where I was cut off from the earth. Here, now, I was a part of it, perched on its rim, three-dimensional in motion, giddy with excitement. I laughed and shouted, not caring who heard me, talking to God and my mother and Matt and my instructors, “Thank-you, thank-you. Thank-you for this moment!”
I boated around in that generous air for fifty minutes. My glider and dozens of others weaving together like a hoard of butterflies, dancing with the wind until the sun was only a comma above Sand across the valley and I knew I must land or risk my instructors’ disapproval. But, I didn’t want to leave that air, that gift, afraid it might be weeks, months again, before I had this time in heaven, this freedom. Finally, fighting a wind that wanted me still, I spiraled lazily to the landing zone and rolled-in on soft turf. I literally skipped all over that field, hugging everyone, boring them with the details of my flight, one they had all made years before, but they listened, smiling. Then they laughed with me, congratulated me, teased me over the grass stains on my knees, hugged me and handed me a beer. My first soaring flight, and there would be many more years of this to come.

[JC1]

Flying without an engine

Friday, December 24, 2004

When did you know you were 'kinky?'

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

This is how it feels flying

Friday, December 17, 2004

B.com

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Gingerbread

Wednesday, December 08, 2004

Monday, December 06, 2004

I jump from a mountain

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