Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  I could sense Chris’s elation that his work was coming to fruition since he had done most of the organization for this project, and I could see him mentally switching gears into jump mode as he made adjustments to his camera helmet and stepped into his rig.

  I spotted the two tripods near the rim and picked my way over to them. It took only a few minutes to rig up some anchors and ropes so the cameramen could safely perch at the very edge of the canyon or even rappel down into it if they wanted. With my rigging done, I picked a good vantage point nearby so I could take in all the action and shoot some pictures with my little camera.

  Chris tracking in the Little Colorado Canyon

  The guys gathered at the top of the rim, at a point where the wall was sharply undercut below them. Damian backed up from the cliff and set off in a smooth run, launching into the air with his arms back by his sides, head tucked down, and legs straight back in a perfect tracking position. His execution looked as masterful as that of an Olympic dive or ski jump. I watched in sheer amazement as he flew through the air at a steep angle away from the wall. I knew exactly what the air felt like as his body dropped lower and lower down the canyon, reaching terminal speed. But I had no idea what it would be like to run off the edge of a cliff.

  Way down below, Damian’s canopy bloomed into the air, and I watched him fly safely down to a small, sandy patch deep in the canyon. I heard the static of a radio, and then Blake ran to the edge and projected himself into the air. Next was Chris, and then Kenyon. In just a few minutes, they were all small specks far below, their canopies puddled in the sand around them. I felt chills, even in the hot midday sun. It was funny, even strange now, to think that I’d been scared by seeing people base jump before. There was no question in my mind. I wanted to be doing this too, more than anything else.

  The chopper dropped into the canyon and rose out. I stood at a safe distance from the loud blades as Blake and Chris hopped out, and I saw Dave beckoning me through the windshield. I ran over and jumped into the seat, putting on the headset.

  “I need to go back for Kenyon and Damian, so there’s space for you if you want to come for the ride.”

  “Thanks, Dave! I want to ride as much as I’m let.”

  “I think they want to have two of them jump off the chopper next, to get air-to-air footage of the other guys jumping off the cliff.”

  “They’re loving this, it’s like a dream trip for them.” I smiled. “It really makes me want to start base jumping. Like right now.”

  “Yeah, I’m definitely going to start AFF at Eloy. My brother has been trying to talk me into it for years. I just never made the time.”

  The chopper swayed into the soft air, the blades stirring up rowdy, wild wind. At the rim, Dave dropped into the canyon, curving right beside the wall as we descended through the turns of the corridor. Ahead, I could see it branching off endlessly into others, creating complicated passageways. Rock towers rose near the walls like lunar cities. It was so big, but within just seconds the chopper was on sand, Damian and Kenyon had jumped into the back, and we were rising up again. This helicopter was the coolest thing ever. I wondered what it would be like to be a chopper pilot.

  As the day went on, everyone seemed to be everywhere at once, three-dimensionally, unlimited by gravity. I loved watching the chopper beating up in and out of the canyons, shuttling the jumpers up from below. I could see the guys becoming more comfortable with the site and starting to get looser and more relaxed with each jump. They decided to try for some different camera angles, and the show became even more interesting to watch. Dave hovered in the air just in front of the cliff, while Chris hung straight off the skid with his legs dangling, helmet camera pointed straight toward Kenyon as he ran off. As soon as Kenyon’s feet left the edge, Chris dropped off the chopper and followed him down through the air. Blake and Damian jumped off the cliff together, both their cameras rolling on each other as they tracked.

  By late afternoon, the winds had come up and the guys deemed the conditions unsuitable for any more base jumps. Dave ferried us from the island mesa back to the other side, and the ambulance team drove off. Everyone was buzzing from the jumps and the excitement. The Intel execs all looked relaxed and happy. Clearly, enough good footage was in the bag to fulfill the project, even without getting any more. The guys could spend the second day shooting without the pressure of needing to get enough done to have something.

  I walked over to Chris and smiled at his glowing expression. “That was such a good day. It makes me want to start base jumping right now.”

  “Dave seems like a really good guy,” Chris said. “He says he wants to do his AFF.”

  “Yeah, we were talking about that. I think Blake wants to help him out at Eloy and get him connected with people there.”

  “Maybe you should ask him if you can do a heli jump.”

  “Whoa. I hadn’t thought of that,” I said, startled. “At all. But you’re right—I even have my skydiving rig here. Do you think he would? I’m kind of afraid to ask.”

  “You’re a pretty girl. I think you should ask him. All he can say is no. I’ll go up with you and help you pick the spot if he says yes. If you want to start base jumping, you really need to do a heli jump to experience an exit into dead air. This is a perfect opportunity,” Chris said.

  I liked the idea. A lot. “I get the feeling Dave is kind of a maverick. Who knows, he might be into it, he definitely likes jumping.”

  “Just get your rig and be totally ready, and we’ll go over there and talk to him.”

  The winds had made base jumping too risky beside the cliffs, but the conditions for skydiving couldn’t be better. I could make a soft upwind landing on an open dirt road.

  Dave and Jeff stood near the chopper talking, a few hundred yards away from the group. I casually pulled my skydiving rig from the back of the car and headed over.

  “So, Dave, they’re done for the day, and I was wondering if I could maybe come do a jump out of the helicopter on your way back to Cameron.”

  Dave gave me a level gaze, and I held his eyes, not saying any more. He slowly started to smile, fine lines fanning from his movie-star eyes. “You’re not kidding, are you? You really want to jump.”

  I was a little puzzled. Didn’t I say I wanted to jump?

  “I have my skydiving rig, if you’d let me.” I was almost sure he’d say no. It wasn’t illegal for me to jump from a helicopter with a skydiving rig into the open desert, but it wasn’t part of the project being done here. It was a long shot, asking Dave for a free heli ride to make a somewhat bandit jump. But I had to ask. I turned slightly so he could see the red-and-purple rig on my back and looked over my shoulder at him hopefully.

  Dave’s bemused smile broadened to a grin. “Where do girls like you come from?”

  “Um, Utah.”

  “I have to fly the chopper back to Cameron whether you come or not, so it won’t make a difference either way on fuel. Come on, get in. I can get you up to three thousand feet, but that’s it.”

  I looked at Chris in disbelieving delight, quickly stepped into my leg loops and cinched the straps, and ducked into the back of the chopper as the blades cycled up. Chris followed me in, and Dave swept off the ground.

  Everything felt different as I looked out the window, trying to figure out visually how high we were above the ground as we gained altitude. Instead of being a passenger carelessly enjoying the ride, my brain was running through all the things I had to do and remember. I’d never jumped without an altimeter before. Three thousand feet was my normal pull altitude, but I’d be leaving the helicopter at three thousand feet. I figured if I deployed around two thousand feet, it would still be safe enough, so I’d probably track for about ten seconds before opening my parachute. It would happen fast, especially compared with what I knew. I wondered how you could really tell when to pull when you were base jumping, with no altimeter to tell you how low you’d gotten. Since I didn’t have my altimeter or my helmet with me, I was
about to find out.

  I scanned the desert, trying to pick out the safest landing spot. I couldn’t make out any contours, but from the drive in I knew that most of the terrain was as purely flat as it looked from above. Dirt roads crossed the open desert, so I just needed to pick a good-looking spot, where I could be sure to land on a straight stretch of road.

  I wondered what it would feel like, falling into dead air, instead of being held by the firm rush of airspeed. I wondered if I’d actually have the falling sensation, and if it would be scary. I didn’t have anything to compare it to. Watching base jumps all day long was really no preparation for this moment of being here right now, about to drop off the helicopter myself. Everything changes when you’re doing instead of watching. I looked over at Chris, knowing he wouldn’t let me do anything too stupid, and he nodded at me with a warm smile.

  Dave looked back and shouted over the noise, “Three thousand feet, this is the most I can give you.”

  The noise of the helicopter made things feel urgent and rushed. I reminded myself to think and slow down. I looked down and picked a straight stretch of dirt road to aim for. There was no wind flag, no giant green football field like at the drop zone, no procession of other canopies pointing the way in. The wind had been coming from the west, so I decided to land in that direction and hope it had stayed the same.

  Dave was hovering, the helicopter swaying slightly. I spun my legs around and scooted down, reaching for the skid with my feet. The air was windy and noisy from the blades as I balanced on the skid, clutching the doorframe behind me for balance. Looking down at the miles of empty desert below the beating helicopter, I had a lot of second thoughts. I had some third and fourth ones too. It was loud and rowdy and kind of intimidating, especially without anyone else to watch going first. I was glad Chris was behind me, but I kind of wished he were jumping too. I could sense Dave wanting me to get going so he didn’t waste fuel.

  I took a deep breath and reminded myself to just do what I always do, make it be the same. I arched my back, threw my arms forward, and dropped off the metal bar. Everything went quiet as I fell below the helicopter and brought my arms back by my sides in the familiar tracking position. I counted in my head, “… one thousand eight, one thousand nine, one thousand ten,” reached back, and grabbed the pilot chute, throwing it into the air.

  I knew it was much lower than I normally opened my canopy, but I was still high above the desert. Usually when the altimeter read a thousand feet, I started my landing pattern, joining the other canopies flying in a three-sided box pattern to land in the field. Here I had no idea how high I was or if the wind had switched direction. I relied on my eyes, watching the ground take shape below me as the junipers started to look like bushes instead of dots. And in this moment I realized the difference. Even an altimeter was a rule, telling me when to pull, when to turn my canopy. Here, in the middle of the desert, there were no rules, none at all. Every decision, even the decision to be jumping out of the helicopter, was my own. That’s what base jumping meant, and that’s why it was so irresistible and yet also so terrifying. It was absolute freedom, and absolute freedom is scary.

  My heart was beating hard as I lined up over the dirt road and flared the canopy for a landing. I came in fast in a cloud of dirt as the parachute wafted down in front of me. I looked around at all the emptiness around me, Dave and Chris dropping down toward me from above. I’d done my first helicopter jump, off-site in the desert without instruments. I couldn’t ask for a better base-jumping simulator. I almost couldn’t believe it had all just happened. The whole sequence of events, from Chris’s offer to my skydiving rig’s mysteriously ending up in the baggage pile, seemed clearly meant to be.

  I tried to catch my breath as I coiled the lines and gathered up my parachute. The chopper set down and Chris hopped out to help me bundle up the nylon.

  “You’ve got to be really careful with this. We don’t have anything to stow it in, and you can’t let the wind pull it out of the chopper or it could wrap the blades,” he shouted.

  That was a pretty terrifying thought, the entire helicopter falling out of the sky with my canopy tangled in the blades. Still shaky from the jump, I anxiously bundled up the nylon and sat on it firmly in the chopper, clutching it hard with my legs and arms while Chris grabbed it from the sides with an iron grip.

  Dave looked back and gave us a thumbs-up. Chris and I grinned at each other gleefully as we shot back up into the air. It struck me how much things can change in five minutes. I needed to remember that. Things change so fast. This was who I really was, this person open to any opportunity, living in the knowledge that adventures were there for the taking as long I was there to take them. It was the me I’d always been before life had started to push down on my shoulders and stitch me to the earth.

  The stitches were stretching and getting thinner. It wouldn’t be long before they snapped completely, releasing me to shoot free into the sky. I would fly from these cliffs. The knowledge rose inside me like happiness, like a plane lifting off.

  Chapter Seven

  Emptiness

  Pervertical Sanctuary, Longs Peak Diamond Brian Kimball

  I sat on the cabin floor with my back propped against the worn green armchair, sifting my hands through the fur on Fletcher’s neck. It was so fabulously thick and voluminous that I could gather the folds of skin in a big white ball over my fists to surprise people. Fletch breathed deeply in her sleep. She smelled warm and comfortable, the clean scent of outdoors in her coat. For the billionth time, I admired the rich brown and black markings on her forehead and ears. She was the most beautiful dog ever.

  After the high energy of the Arizona trip, it felt good to sit quietly and watch the afternoon light stretch in squares on the floor. The room was sparsely furnished now with things that were mine: a metal lamp, a purple cushion with iron legs, some shirts, shorts, and jeans folded on the open shelf in the wall, all scored from the Boulder thrift stores.

  There was a lot I liked about this temporary life. I especially liked the feeling of simple contentment here, living without most things I’d considered essential just a few months ago. For years I’d been reading Sufi poems and Tibetan Buddhist teachings and aspiring toward non-attachment. But I found it hard to actually live that belief. When push came to shove, I was attached to a lot of things, and had tenaciously fought to keep them.

  Until now, I’d unquestioningly believed in marriage forever. I’d believed that relationships would endure like granite, and that absolute loyalty would naturally be returned in kind. Now I understood that the only one I should rely on so completely was myself. And Fletch. Everything and everyone else was temporary at best, not to be relied upon. And, all things considered, to expect eternal commitment or reliability from others was perhaps unfair, or at least unrealistic. People change. Business changes. Feelings change. Life changes. Everything changes. Change itself is the only sure thing.

  It seemed logical that if I never relied or depended on anyone else, I would never risk being as weak or hopeless as I had been in those awful months of spring and early summer when everything turned upside down. Looking back at my thoughts during that time, I could see that my life might depend on it. It was up to me to eliminate that risk.

  Though I’d always been independent in most ways, this sense of absolute unattachment and self-reliance was a new distinction. It gave me a powerful feeling of peace and strength. It made things so clean, so easy. Liberation was as simple as just letting go. Over the past few months I’d slipped into a stripped-down existence without making any real decision to do so. I’d let go of many things I’d most valued, both material and emotional, and I was finding that I didn’t need those things.

  The small room turned gold. The squares of light lengthened and lit Fletcher’s white fur with a rich glow. It was a strange summer, in every way, but my unplanned escape here began to take on meaning. For a while, I felt as if I’d lost all control over my life. I’d started to believe that
everything I touched would turn to disaster, seemingly inevitably, no matter how hard I tried to make things go right. Now it was the opposite. Plunging into the world of flight as a complete beginner, I was doing something that went against all my instincts but was still relatively safe. In my other world, the world of climbing, I was pushing the envelope and upping the ante of risk each time I emerged unscathed from the wall. And I was unable to deny that things didn’t always go wrong; in fact, it was starting to seem as if they tended to go right. Every time I took a chance, I came out not just alive, but happier and stronger. My path seemed to be rolling out in front of me. With each jump and each climb, I found a little bit of belief, the confidence to take another step.

  I’d been working to overcome fear for years in climbing. It looked to me as if my inability to manage fear in real life was precisely what had caused the fabric to unravel with such snowballing momentum once the first thread had been pulled. In the aftermath, blocking my emotions had been a simple survival strategy, a tool I knew how to use. It had also given me the powerful taste of freedom from fear. But burying all emotions wasn’t a true solution. I couldn’t live like a machine forever. If I wanted real freedom, I needed to understand fear more deeply and learn to control it, or how not to be controlled by it. My current single-minded desire to skydive and to free solo seemed like a logical course. I was coming at the problem the way I knew, taking apart my weakness and working at it relentlessly, like the complicated parts of a Bach fugue. I wanted to fix it. And I knew from years spent on a piano bench that through sheer discipline and focus, I could.

  Free soloing the Casual Route was a major breakthrough. It was a good start. The Diamond had other, harder routes, and one in particular kept coming into my mind, Pervertical Sanctuary. Pervertical had always been a somewhat notorious climb, a soaring line of splitter cracks on the far left side of the vertical wall. While the Casual Route had just one section of greater difficulty, the sustained physical nature of Pervertical throughout the thousand feet of vertical rock was much more demanding, especially at the high altitude of Longs Peak. The route was strenuous, with steep terrain that widened from a small crack to a body-size one, demanding the full range of crack technique.