Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  I watched the parachutes lofting down as first Ted and then Chris appeared beside me.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I think I’m okay. I might be able to walk out.”

  My mind ran over the hike out of the ravine, the short drop-offs to be jumped down, the steep, sliding dirt hillsides to be traversed. It took at least a half hour to descend to the flat creekbed and meet the dirt road. We should get going before the adrenaline wore off and I really got hit by the pain.

  I tried again to stand and crumpled back to the ground. For the next hour or so I lay on the ground, nursing the delusion I was going to hike out. I could stand, for about two seconds, until the pain made me nauseated and I collapsed down. Chris and Ted disappeared for a private conference and came back with the not-so-shocking news that it was time to call a helicopter.

  “Do you have insurance?” Ted asked.

  “Yeah, I do.”

  “Should we get the base gear off you?” Chris asked.

  “No, my insurance is good, I’m covered.”

  “Are you sure?” Chris asked.

  “I am. My brother has the same insurance, and he just crashed at a bridge in Oregon, and he had air rescue and surgery and everything, so I know it’s good.”

  Chris and Ted stuffed the canopy under my hips for padding. The pain was coming on hard. Ted stood in the most open spot with his cell phone, talking to rescue dispatchers and giving our GPS coordinates. Chris sat beside me, holding my pilot chute above my face to keep the sun out of my eyes. He chatted with me about nothing, trying to distract me. It was nice of him, both of them, to be helping me like this. I’d totally ruined their jump, their whole day. We should all be walking out now, scrambling down the ravine, laughing and talking about our jump. I felt so ashamed and incompetent. I’d screwed up completely, from the moment I decided to use a parachute I didn’t know at this rugged, technical site, to the moment I decided to jump in subpar wind conditions, to the moment I hadn’t had the skill to pull it off despite everything.

  I was used to being good at the things I did, and I had no tolerance for incompetence or recklessness, especially in myself. That intolerance was why I was alive and had never had an accident in twenty years of pursuing the most dangerous and committing forms of climbing. I thought nothing of going alone up and down a huge mountain, or with a trusted partner, because I had total faith in my ability to get back no matter what might happen. I might have spent more days and nights alone in the wilderness than with partners, and I understood the consequences of everything I did. I knew how to keep myself safe. I was smart, strong, and experienced, and I knew how to deal. But that world was different, and I’d never understood that as fully as I did now. I blamed myself in every way for being here, utterly helpless, lying flat on my back on the dirt, unable even to move out of the sun’s glare. If I were alone right now, I’d have to crawl out, down the steep ravines, the drop-offs, the talus, and the scrubby hillsides. I wondered if I could have done it. It seemed daunting, nearly impossible now, lying here with the dull pain radiating up from the center of my hips.

  I thought of all the times I’d done this jump alone, exchanging rides with Mario or getting dropped off by climbing friends who could barely see me from the top of the cliff and didn’t even know the way to this landing area from the road. That had been a bad idea, reckless even, or maybe just naive. I marveled at my stupidity. I’d made so many mistakes. But I could use my legs. I was pretty sure my pelvis was broken, but that would heal. I’d got lucky, much more than I deserved, I thought. I was thankful for it.

  Three hours went by until the chopper approached. A paraglider had crashed one ridge over, with severe injuries, another victim of strange late-morning winds and pilot error. They went to get him first. The blades beat the air, breaking the stillness above as the helicopter zigzagged, searching for us. Ted stayed on the phone, trying to explain our location, but they couldn’t even pick us out in the canyon until Chris started waving my bright orange pilot chute as a beacon, the pilot chute Mario had lent me. Ted stayed on the phone with the dispatcher while she relayed information back and forth. They’d finally spotted us, but the pilot wasn’t sure he could land in this terrain. We waited. I imagined being carried out of the canyon on a stretcher, bouncing excruciatingly as the poor rescuers tried to lower me down the vertical sections. I didn’t want to think about it.

  The helicopter beat down, landing in the one small dirt spot that was free of rocks, just big enough to put the skids down. The blades whipped the air, filling the quiet with sound. The paramedics jumped out and used my parachute like a hammock to hoist me onto a bodyboard. Suddenly everything was urgent, loud, and rushed. My hair blew all over my face as they loaded me in, closed the doors, and we lifted into the air, rising out of the canyon. I was so thankful to be in the helicopter. It was strange to be so helpless, to be rescued, to be unable to get myself out of a place I’d put myself in. I thanked the paramedics over and over.

  I’d fractured my sacrum in three places and torn some intercostal rib tissue and done something to my elbow that caused a burning pain whenever I touched it. I was amazed to have got off so lightly. The doctor told me that my muscles had contracted so hard on impact that the contraction itself had caused my sacrum to fracture. The X-rays had also revealed an old, now healed, fracture on the front of my pelvis, a souvenir from my other crash landing at Castleton Tower. I’d never even known about that break, but in retrospect, it made sense. They don’t do anything for pelvic fractures anyway, except load you up with painkillers, so it didn’t really matter that it had gone undiagnosed.

  In the hospital, Grand Junction, Colorado

  Chris arrived in the ER of the Grand Junction, Colorado, hospital carrying Fletcher in to see me, and Mario drove out immediately from Moab. For the next three days, he flew the jump plane all morning and drove the two hours to the hospital to visit me and then back again. When the morphine drip and catheter came out and I proved I could take a few steps down the hall with a walker, they sent me home with a staggering supply of narcotics, and the directions “Do as much as you can. Sacral fractures are extremely painful, but the more you do, the faster you’ll heal.” Everything hurt, a lot, but not that bad considering. I was permanently ecstatic not to be more seriously injured and felt that I had been handed a gift from the universe with something so mendable. I saved the narcotics for future emergencies. They seemed like a good thing to have in the jump kit.

  Mario took care of me in a way I’d never been taken care of before. He flew the jump plane every morning and came straight to my house by noon. He brought me food, helped me up and down from bed, rented me a walker from the drugstore, and after a few weeks had passed, he put a futon in the back of his Honda Element and drove me out to Dead Horse Point to see the sunset, waiting patiently beside me as I used his shoulder and a crutch to slowly limp the few yards out to the viewpoint. I felt strange having someone there, making everything easier for me. Helping me. It was even stranger to realize how much I liked it. In just a few weeks, I came to depend on him. He actually seemed to enjoy taking care of me. Mario was so solid, giving me the same full attention that he gave everything else he did.

  He took care of Fletch too. By now, she had big, comfortable dog beds in every room, and traveling between them was much of her daily activity, kind of like hobbling around the house from bed to sofa was mine. She didn’t seem to want to go outside as much, until Mario enlarged her dog door after he observed that she had a hard time ducking down to use it and then built her a ramp to get down the porch steps. I’d noticed her hesitating at the door, but I hadn’t figured out why. He added side rails to the ramp and extended it to reduce the slope when he noticed that she seemed hesitant about going down it, then glued carpet on it to keep her from sliding. When everything was done, I felt guilty and thoughtless because I saw that she had been going outside less only because it had been getting too difficult until Mario fixed things. I was starting to wonder how we’d
managed without him. It was funny, in a way, when I thought of all those years that Fletch and I had crossed the country back and forth together, living out of my truck, not depending on anyone for anything. She was the only creature I knew who was more independent than me. Now we needed someone, and it felt like a miracle to have that someone there for us.

  Mario taking Fletch to the crag

  The world was so different, so much bigger and yet smaller. In the first week, I was able to move slowly through the house, taking calculated steps with the walker in front of me. Each step was a considered movement as I made sure I didn’t slip or push the wrong way. It took a long time and an acceptance of some pain, but I made my way from bed to bathroom to kitchen. Small distances and obstructions became significant issues to be handled. The three steps on the front porch were a major project, one I had to work up to. I forced myself to graduate from walker to crutches to ski poles until I could make it down the porch steps and out to my truck so I could drive the quarter mile to the pool, where I could swim or just walk weightlessly in the water and get a break from pain. The journey took almost the whole day.

  I’d never liked swimming much, but now I looked forward to getting up each day and being in the water. Physically, I felt much like Fletch appeared to be feeling with the arthritis slowly taking possession of her spine and shoulders, making her journey from bed to food bowl slow and considered. Except I would get better, and she wouldn’t. It made my heart hurt. It also showed me how lucky I was. I didn’t think much about jumping or climbing or anything I couldn’t do. Everything I could do struck me as a gift, an undeserved miracle of good fortune, and it filled me with appreciation. Every day was full with figuring out how to negotiate around my injuries and enjoying the novelty of doing things I wouldn’t normally do. This injury was actually fun, or at least extremely engaging. My feelings about everything had changed in that last second before impact, when I thought, Not my back. I couldn’t get over how incredibly lucky I was.

  Exactly five weeks after the crash, the bone doctor told me the fractures had mended. Just like that, I was free to climb, skydive, and base jump again, to love every shred of life out of all the things I was so lucky to be able to do. I was deeply thankful.

  In the last few months, I’d given in completely to my unquenchable thirst for jumping, charging full speed ahead, jumping everything that seemed even close to the parameters of my quickly gained experience, pushing myself rather than holding myself back. I’d been like an addict with free access to drugs, and now I was experiencing the consequences firsthand. As usual, the only way for me to learn a lesson was to live it myself. For a time when I’d first started to jump, I’d been almost indifferent to the thought of losing my life. Now I had come out of that dark feeling. The world seemed bright, glorious, and spilling with promise, as it always had before. But my thoughts about death had changed slightly. Now death struck me as something inevitable, the guaranteed result of living itself, not something that could be dodged or skipped. Just another thing that simply is. Like gravity.

  But before now, I’d thought of base jumping as being a lot like free soloing, as a pursuit where small mistakes can result in fatality. Generally speaking, free soloists who fall die. Period, the end. It’s tragic for everyone else, but for the climber, it’s a simple game—if things go wrong, it’s just over.

  I understood now that the comparison was not good. It’s possible to make enormous mistakes and have little skill and still walk away from a base jump. As a free soloist, you probably won’t even get off the ground unless you’re highly skilled, and if you make a mistake, you’ll almost certainly die. It’s possible to make mistakes and die on a base jump, of course. But more likely and more typically, messing up a jump and not getting lucky that day results in getting hurt, often badly. I thought about everything that had happened, all the mistakes I’d made, and I wondered how I hadn’t seen it before. Getting hurt badly meant losing my freedom, for me an outcome worse than death. I’d been stupid, or at least inexperienced, in many ways, and knowing it shifted my perspective about base jumping completely. I’d been given a cheap lesson, and it would not be wasted on me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Half-Empty

  Fletch at the Tombstone parking lot

  Winter came to the desert, in a sudden hush. The frenzied days of fall seemed like another life. The endless stream of visitors had all gone home or to warmer places, and once again I had time to think and feel, to return to solitude and quiet. The days were short and brilliant. White snow frosted the red cliffs, blue shadows fired the orange rock. Fletch and I sat in front of the woodstove in the long evenings, watching the flames wrap the wood. I listened to the crackling and to Fletcher’s deep-sleep breathing, comforted by the sound of air flowing through her little body. All three of us—the fire, Fletch, me—creating heat, breathing air, living.

  Fletch was fourteen, and I knew that my dreams of celebrating her thirtieth birthday were just that. The X-rays showed arthritis in her spine, back legs, front shoulders, and elbows. She wasn’t hearing quite as much. She wasn’t seeing quite as much either. Her nose seemed to work perfectly, though, and she definitely had all her taste buds.

  I remembered when we ran together in the desert for hours. Fletch would run and run, darting everywhere, chasing lizards, chasing rabbits, giving a great big f%*@ you to the ravens, whom she always had some kind of vendetta against. I remembered her legs flying across the slick rock, her entire face stretched in a glorious, ecstatic smile. Walking was slow and hard now. Those sturdy little back legs had become floppy and prone to wipeouts, and my heart caught when she struggled to her feet. I wondered what I’d do on the day she couldn’t make it back up. In this, as in everything else, Fletch had a spirit so strong it put me to shame. I watched her closely in these quiet winter days because she was showing me yet again the right way to live—never giving up, doing the best she could, with a smile on her face. Fletch was a happy little creature. She loved the moments of her life.

  Fletch at home in the yard

  The morning after Christmas, I lifted Fletch into my truck and drove down Kane Creek Road to the Tombstone, as we did nearly every day. I planted my wind flag and helped her out into the dirt parking lot. Exploring the yard and traveling up and down her ramp to her dog door and into the kitchen to keep a close tab on her food dish had become enough exercise at home. But she liked her outings, liked seeing my canopy fly toward her and touch down. We could do it together. When I set her on the dirt, she stood a little shakily at first, like a fawn, and looked timid. This, from my little dog from the Navajo res lands, who used to know she owned the world. It grabbed at my heart. I ignored her, like she liked, and started my own investigations, looking on the ground for heart-shaped rocks, feeling the winds move, watching the flag dance. I knew already the winds were too variable and swirly to jump. I didn’t jump in that kind of wind anymore. I’d learned.

  Fletch got interested. She made her way to the scrubby, dried grasses and nosed through the brush. Gradually her radius widened. We strolled around together, noticing things. The breeze flipped and circled, playing with the flag and swirling around the canyon like water.

  The flag dropped flat. Suddenly the wind was out, switched off.

  The Tombstone was all rich winter light, the face smooth and perfect, glowing orange. I thought about stepping off the edge and feeling my body loose in the air. The wind swept my face from each direction, then spun around giddily, brushing me and flipping my hair. The flag leaped up, flicked from side to side, dancing. The air darted around invisibly.

  This was obviously the wrong time for jumping. But Fletch was winding down from her tour. I watched the flag flick around some more. Little lulls came, when it fell straight down and stayed flat for a few seconds. I lifted Fletch into the car, into her circular dog bed in the passenger seat, and cracked the windows so she’d have fresh air but not get too cold. She curled up, ready for a nap after all that excitement. I pick
ed up my rig and started up the snowy trail.

  Wind pushed into my face as I turned the first corner, into the canyon that leads to Back of Beyond and the top of the Tombstone. It was still a half hour to the top. At some moment, the wind would rush away as fast as it rushed in. It would go away to the next place, leaving silent calm behind it, an entirely different world. It was good to walk to the top, even if the winds were wrong at the parking lot. It could still happen. I liked walking up the snow-covered slabs near the top, stamping my feet to make them stick. Behind me the La Sals were bright and pointed, the softly draped slopes like skirts of white velvet.

  When I reached the top, I sat in my spot, where I always sat. The flag was still crazy-dancing down below. The wind was slicing up the wall and from side to side. I crawled to the edge of the Tombstone and spat down the face, just to see what it would do. My saliva flew up and left, while the air blew my hair back. I sat back. I looked at the desert walls lining the canyons that forked out beyond me. I felt the wind.

  It was good to be here, on top of this rounded rock wall, surrounded by snow and sandstone. It was good to feel the wind, take the cold air into my lungs. It was good to hear the birds shoot past, riding the air. It was good to think about the feeling of falling through the air, talus rushing into my eyes.

  I imagined the jump, those clean seconds of time. I wanted to jump. Tomorrow the wind would be in Colorado or Kansas, leaving the desert calm and safe, and the Tombstone and I would still be here together, for the rest of my life. There was no hurry. I had been very stupid, I thought now, leaping off things and into things when the time wasn’t right. Somehow my deep intelligence with climbing hadn’t translated to anything else. I knew better now. I didn’t want to get hurt anymore. I’d decided strongly that I wouldn’t get hurt again. The wind rippled my jacket and made my eyes tear a little. I stood up, satisfied. It was good to walk down, to Fletch.