Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  Virgil had plunged headfirst into skydiving, literally, racking up big numbers of jumps and traveling to drop zones around the country. He got briefly addicted to free flying in wind tunnels, which many jumpers referred to as “the crack pipe,” since it was so easy to burn through money in two-minute chunks, and now he wanted to move to a place that was more accessible to skydiving, skiing, and snowboarding. Virgil began taking trips to interview at hospitals around the Colorado and Utah area, and I couldn’t wait for him to move. I’d missed him during his last few years in Arcata, a remote town hours away from anything, on winding, mountainous roads, which seemed to require a full expedition to visit. When I’d started AFF, I’d fantasized about becoming a jumper and being able to share adventures with my brother again the way we had when we climbed together. Now it was really happening.

  “Let’s get on a load, I can be ready in a minute,” Virgil said. “What should we do?”

  “Do you want to track?” I smiled.

  “So you haven’t tried to sit-fly at all?”

  “A couple of times. I’m really bad at it. I love tracking!”

  “Let’s do a couple of tracking jumps, and then we could do a sit jump. You can just try to hold a sit and I’ll stay with you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  My dad had grown up fascinated with motorcycles, taking them apart and rebuilding them, riding to college engineering classes through the Michigan winter. He’d sold his best street bike to buy my mother an engagement ring, but had continued to ride in three-day enduro races while my brother and I were both in diapers until my mother put her foot down and ordered him to quit. He began designing radar systems for Cessna, which required him to learn to fly the planes himself, much to my mother’s chagrin. On family vacations we piled into a four-seater Cessna along with our cat, who was always airsick. My dad flew the tiny plane from New Jersey to Missouri, where he had a small cattle farm and could work on the buildings, machinery, and fields from sunup to sundown, both my parents’ idea of a relaxing vacation.

  My brother and I didn’t like going to Missouri. We didn’t share my parents’ enthusiasm for recreational farmwork. I wanted to stay home and go swimming with my friends or read books. But my dad had kept his favorite enduro bike and it stayed at the farm. This relatively small bike (for a six-foot adult) had a doublesize yellow plastic gas tank and had been my dad’s most cherished racing bike back in the day. To start it, you mounted the seat, stood your foot on the small metal kick pedal, and jumped down on it with your full body weight. If you were a skinny twelve-year-old, not kicking it hard enough resulted in getting kicked back hard on your calf and shin while the engine coughed.

  We were both allowed to ride the motorcycle around the farm to check fence lines. Virgil and I loved checking fence lines. Since I couldn’t generally start the bike, despite persistent jumping on the kick-starter, with only bruises on my leg to show for my efforts, I mostly rode behind Virgil as he tore across fields and through trees. We frequently ended up sandwiched on the ground with the revving dirt bike on top of us, and I’m not sure how either of us never got seriously hurt.

  At fourteen, my brother was also deemed old enough to drive the smaller tractor while I stood behind him on the platform so we could collect rocks to fill ditches. When rock-collecting with the tractor, in a few incidents the tractor nearly tipped on both of us. Naturally we didn’t tell our parents about any of it. The climbing adventures we’d had together after college were often similarly more than we’d bargained for. But we always managed to scrape our way to the top with just a few harrowing incidents along the way that were funny from the safety of hindsight.

  Our tracking jump went perfectly. I flew through the air next to my brother, almost fighting back tears at how wonderful this moment felt, wondering how it could even be real. We quickly packed and rode the trailer out for the next load.

  “How do you want to do this?” I asked, as the truck curved around the end of the runway toward the plane.

  “We can get in the door together and then squat down like you’re sitting, and then we’ll lock our knees and grab arms. So then we’ll exit and get stable like that, and then let go and try to hold the sit. I’ll stay with you, so you can just try to sit.”

  Virgil had been free flying for months already and had spent hours in the wind tunnel practicing his sit flying. I’d tried it twice with a group of skilled free fliers and found it surprisingly hard to keep my body sitting up in the strong-moving air without being tossed backward or sideways to the belly-to-earth arch that was the skydiver’s default stable position. The fifty seconds went by fast, and I could see why people got addicted to the tunnel to learn how to control their bodies.

  We boarded the plane last, sitting right by the door since we would be getting out first for our sit jump. The Otter climbed quickly, and the shouts of “Door! Door!” started up from the crowded jumpers farther down the bench. Virgil bent to grab the bottom of the Plexiglas door, sliding it up into the curved ceiling so the cold air could rush into the plane. I sat, watching the fields get smaller, at the edge of the open doorway, encased in the noise from wind and engines, and starting to shiver in my long-sleeved T-shirt. The tandem guys were always too hot and yelling for the door to be opened as soon as the plane was up, but I liked being tucked back in the warm corner near the pilot, away from the cold wind blast. I was relieved when we got to ten thousand feet and Virgil slid the door shut again.

  At thirteen thousand feet the plane slowed slightly and the yellow get-ready light came on by the door. It switched to green, and Virgil threw the door up again. I squatted as though sitting in an imaginary chair, facing him. We locked our knees and grabbed each other’s forearms and launched out of the plane. We were still upright in the air together until Virgil let go of my arms, as we’d planned. I popped backward like a champagne cork. I fought to get upright again, then tumbled backward and spun down through the sky, struggling to get sitting. As the seconds stretched out, I felt frustrated that I couldn’t get back into the seated position. I had been taught to get into a stable position before throwing out my pilot chute, and I knew that if I threw it out while I was spinning out of control in two directions, I could get spun up in the bridle and even wrapped in the lines of the canopy. I’d also been taught to keep altitude awareness and to deploy at three thousand feet. I gave up on the sit, arched my back almost into a backbend, and finally stopped spinning. A little dizzy, but finally stable, I looked down at my altimeter for the first time since I’d started cannonballing. I was less than fifteen hundred feet above the ground. Instantly, I threw out my pilot chute as hard as I could. I was nine hundred feet above the ground when the parachute opened completely. It had all happened in less than forty seconds.

  I landed just fine and started slowly coiling up my lines. Virgil appeared in front of me, looking deeply upset.

  “What happened? Why did you pull so low? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I was open just below one thousand feet, it was fine. I just couldn’t get the sit to stay. Anyway, I had the CYPRES too.”

  “Do you realize your CYPRES fires just below one thousand feet? You could have had both your main canopy out and the reserve out at the same time, and that can put you into a downplane.”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. I remembered Brendan’s showing me pictures from the AFF manual about a malfunction where both parachutes are out at the same time, and somehow they push away from each other, driving the jumper into the ground. “But it didn’t. I’m fine.”

  “Did you just not check your altimeter?” Virgil pressed.

  “No, I was spinning pretty hard and I didn’t realize how long it was. I thought I could get back to sitting, and I guess I lost track of time.”

  “Look, I have two audible altimeters, just take one. You should have one anyway, so you’re not relying on just your wrist altimeter.”

  I was confused. Virgil seemed rattled to the core, and I’d almost never seen
him so upset before. I knew what kinds of stomach-turning accidents and injuries he saw every day in the ER, and he was typically unflappable. “Why are you so upset? I’m totally fine!”

  “You were dropping like a cannonball, and I was watching you go down below me even after I pulled. It’s really bad to see your sister looking like she’s about to crater into the ground right in front of you. That was not good. You need to use this audible in your helmet.”

  “Okay. Sorry. I’ll get you another one if I take yours, though.”

  We were quiet as we rode the trailer back to the hangar. Without discussing it, we both packed and manifested on the last load of the day, for another sit jump. This time, we both sat in the air, I deployed my parachute at three thousand feet, and everything was fine. We stood around the landing area, drinking beer with a few of the other jumpers, watching the sunset over Longs Peak. Virgil had recovered his good spirits, and I was relieved to see him chatting and laughing with the others. I watched the colors streak and shift in the sky, thinking of how just a short time before I had been up there, just a thousand feet overhead, plummeting out of control toward the ground where I was now standing safely with a beer in my hand. Strangely, I felt no emotion at all. Not fear, not relief, not the weak, shaky feeling you get when you’ve just missed a car accident. True, I had had the CYPRES to fire my reserve for me, but it could also have given me a double-parachute malfunction. I hadn’t felt afraid during the jump, which made sense, because things were happening so fast. But I should have felt all of those emotions when standing in the grass with my canopy draped in front of me, when I was miraculously safe on the ground, realizing how close I’d come to hitting it. I’d been in some close calls while climbing and had always subsequently been overcome by a deep sense of disquiet, understanding I’d just missed serious injury or death. But I felt absolutely nothing, all the way inside and out. Just nothing. It was strangely liberating.

  Chapter Four

  Cutting the Cord

  Eldorado Springs, Colorado

  In Boulder most things could be found at the right coffee shop at the right time. I almost always met my friend Christian at the Italian-style Amante on sunny mornings. A famous climber and quintessential Boulder local, Christian was elegant, brilliant, and warm, with European verve. He had a boutique-style climbing-clothing company, kept intentionally small, a few historic houses in town, and several dogs he’d adopted from the pound.

  Christian also had a rustic cabin just outside Eldorado Canyon, a historic climbing destination about ten miles from Boulder. Many of Christian’s legendary climbing feats had taken place on the slick and devious sandstone prows in Eldo, and he hadn’t been able to resist buying the little cabin when the opportunity arose. He mainly just liked having it, but kept it rented to climbers or outdoorsy guys to sustain the expense, the most recent of whom had disappeared without a clear return date. Brad was a generous friend, I told Christian over my strong Italian coffee, but at a certain point he’d need his living room back. I showed no signs of going home and was starting to think I needed a semitemporary living situation instead of a couch. “Maybe you should check out Just Rite,” Christian suggested. “If you like it, you can rent it for a while. We can work something out.” It sounded like the ideal solution.

  Christian gave me a key and directions to Eldorado Springs, an eclectic grouping of trailers, cabins, and opulent vacation homes at the mouth of the canyon. I hadn’t climbed much in Eldo, but I knew just where the place was. The houses sat tightly along the creek below the spring itself, where you could fill water jugs for twenty-five cents a gallon. The thought of actually living there was a climber’s dream come true. I swallowed the rest of my coffee fast, and Fletch and I set off.

  The city streets gave way to open space and farm fields, the deep brown, anvil-like Boulder flatirons and buttresses of Eldorado Canyon rising up to the west. We turned up the narrowing road that led to the mouth of the canyon, where pavement became dirt just before the park entrance. A wooden bridge over the creek, just wide enough for a car, led to a cluster of close-built cabins. I spotted the small, hand-carved sign nailed to the dark siding, JUST RITE, and pulled into the steep dirt drive in front. Flagstone steps led to a door on the side facing straight into the neighbor’s, a few feet away.

  The rock steps were set much steeper than normal ones, and Fletch was clambering more than scampering up them ahead of me. For years, we had run on trails together, Fletch zooming around everywhere. I’d already downshifted from runs to walks in the last year, and now hills were starting to get difficult for her little legs. I felt a cold stab of anxiety as she strained hard through her shoulders to bring her back legs up the last step. She was only twelve. I wasn’t expecting her to really be “old” for another seven years at least. It had never occurred to me before that Fletch might die, and now that it had, I considered it a pretty outlandish idea. But seeing her struggle like that raised the slightest shadow of doubt in my certainty. Fletch sat on the summit of the landing and looked up at me with her customary wide grin.

  I unlocked the rough wooden door with the tingly feeling of stepping into an old, empty structure. The door opened into one room dominated by a funky, sandstone fireplace, and several multipaned windows relieving the dark wood paneling. Just past the fireplace, a counter split a galley kitchen from a small eating space. There was a fridge. And a shower, with a door opening directly into the living room. Just beside it I found a closet-size toilet with a window that looked straight across the walkway into the neighbor’s. Fletch and I nosed around, opening cabinets. The recent climber had left all the essentials: an armchair, a floor lamp, a small kitchen table and chair, a few cups and plates, a mattress in the loft, and an impressive array of kitsch.

  Just Rite, just outside of Eldo

  I scaled up the wood ladder to the loft, using the sandstone fireplace for extra footholds. It seemed like you had to be a climber to live here, or at least if you wanted to sleep in the loft. I mantled over the top and stretched out. A wood-framed window opened onto the grassy hillside behind the cabin, and the roof came down at a sharp angle from my head to my toes, a clear sheet of Plexiglas epoxied into the slanting ceiling just above my face. It was an airy place to sleep, beneath roof beams and sky. There was just enough room for the small mattress. But Fletch would get the whole downstairs to herself and she wasn’t much of a cuddler anyway unless we were sleeping in the truck. It was 100 percent just right.

  As if the cabin weren’t perfect enough, it sat just a stone’s throw away from the entrance to Eldorado Canyon and a lifetime supply of rock climbing. I’d climbed in Eldo only a few times, and now I could just walk up the road and be there in minutes. Though I’d been absorbed in jumping in the last five weeks, I hadn’t completely stepped away from climbing. I’d never be able to do that.

  For seventeen years, climbing had been as much a part of me as breathing or walking. I’d been eating outside on a concrete wall on an unseasonably beautiful February day in my freshman year at the University of Maryland, with my mountain bike propped beside me, when a rugged guy approached. He looked exactly like a former Airborne Ranger turned wolf biologist, which he was. He’d exchanged to Maryland from Wyoming through a university program and was having trouble finding like-minded companions in this urban area. His name was Kevin. Since my lunch partner was a mountain bike, I apparently looked like a good candidate for outdoor activity, and he suggested we go rock climbing. I’d never heard of rock climbing. It was 1991, and extreme sports weren’t as mainstream as they are today. I’d spent most of my childhood in New Jersey reading books and playing the piano, and poking around the woods a little. I had never been exposed to outdoor sports, though I’d recently started mountain biking, maybe because it was a bit like riding my dad’s old enduro bike. I also liked taking it apart and cleaning the gears and replacing the bearings, something that had to be done after almost every ride on muddy East Coast trails.

  On such a beautiful day, do
ing anything outside sounded more appealing than going to calculus class, and naturally I was curious. What better way to find out what rock climbing might be than to go and do it? Kevin took his Volkswagen Vanagon to a small, unintimidating cliff not far from the campus, called Carderock. We walked through the woods for a few minutes to the edge, and he tied a rope to a tree trunk and tossed it over. We followed the trail down through a gully in the center of the cliff band to the flat area below, where his rope hung down the slabby face to the ground. Kevin showed me how to tie into the end of the rope while he belayed me from the other end, and how to stand on my feet and puzzle my way up the low-angle face. He lent me his special rock shoes, only three sizes too big for me, and his chalk bag, to tie around my waist and use to keep my hands from sweating and slipping off. I was transfixed by all of it—the forested rock walls beside the Potomac River, the game of stepping up from one little rock bump to the next, the odd feeling of the tiny holds under my fingers, this unknown world of knots and ropes and rigging. I scrabbled my way to the top of a few short, simple climbs, and that afternoon my life changed course completely.

  Within a year, I had student-exchanged to Colorado State in Fort Collins, following in Kevin’s footsteps by applying to the interuniversity exchange program. I quit playing piano, which I’d practiced daily since the age of three, and dropped all my music classes. My budding interest in mountain biking fell by the wayside too. Everything was subsumed by the greedy fire of climbing, an intense blaze that seemed to engulf all my thoughts and allowed little time for anything else. Five years later, I tucked my master’s degree in literature into the trunk of my grandmother’s Oldsmobile, next to my other few possessions, and started waiting tables to earn money for season-long climbing trips. With all the passenger seats out, I had room to sleep in there and even cook with a camp stove.