Learning to Fly

by Steph Davis

  Mario didn’t look intimidated; he looked keenly interested. Trying to figure out the best spot to jump and where to land in this convoluted landscape was merely an engaging exploration, like the ones he’d been doing for twenty years. He sat at the edge, observing the area, taking in the shapes and the contours, absorbing the air and height. I could almost see the gears clicking in his brain. Finally he got up and walked back to the car for his base rig.

  “I think it looks good, there’s really no wind. Is it all right if I jump?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Honestly, I don’t really want to jump right now anyway. It’s strange not knowing the landing area. Well, not even being able to see the landing area.”

  “It is intimidating! It’s a big place.” He stepped into his leg loops and cinched them tight.

  “So you’ll walk out and I’ll drive around and figure out how to drive in to where you’ll come out. It’ll probably be an hour, at least.”

  “That’s fine, I’ll need to find the walk out anyway.”

  “Do you have your radio?”

  “Yes, we should turn them on now, and also in about an hour in case we need to communicate when you’re driving in.”

  Mario stood at the edge in his rig and helmet, backed up a few steps, and ran out into the air, launching way out with a forceful push, his legs bent wildly as he rode the air. I watched him drop from life size to doll size and become a bright red square of nylon, flying out over the gray slopes. He seemed to stay airborne forever, flying around the sides of the steep canyon walls, over rock outcroppings and small forested areas, then finally zeroing into the small spot he’d picked out from above. The canopy floated down, barely big enough to see from up here, and Mario’s voice came over the radio, almost gasping with excitement.

  “Woooooohhhhhhh. Whoa. Unbelievable. Just unbelievable!”

  “Nice one!” I laughed happily. “How’s the landing area?”

  “Small. It wouldn’t take much to clean the place up, but there are lots of rocks around. Very three-dimensional. The windsock is here, but it’s pretty torn up.” He breathed out with a long, shivery sound through the plastic radio. “I’m just soaking it in right now!”

  Mario often had a lovely way of phrasing things, perhaps due to being born a French speaker with English as his second language. He once commented that skydiving is all about emotion. He was right, I thought, intrigued. Skydiving serves no practical purpose whatsoever. When an airplane hangar is quiet and empty, it’s as though nothing ever happened there. But in the height of a jumping day, the air is filled with energy and intensity. Motion is in every space and time. In the airplanes, in the landing areas, emotion is thick and tangible. People are lit up, buzzing with feeling—fear, joy, satisfaction, desire. It’s the same for every person at every drop zone, whether first-time tandem passenger, veteran fun jumper, or pilot.

  Certainly, this infectious emotion was why Mario had dedicated his life to jumping. He was an intriguing mix of precision and passion, his feet on the earth and his head in the sky, and he was perhaps the most genuine individual I’d ever met, right up there with Fletch. Being around him just made me want to be around him more. It was a strange experience because I was starting to realize I’d never had it before, at least not with a person. I didn’t feel recovered at all from my failed marriage, and romance seemed as if it should be the last thing on my list. Somehow, though, it had pushed its way up toward the top. I’ve never questioned emotion. I’ve lived my life for it. It wasn’t hard to see that over the last several months, I’d been falling in love as much as I’d been falling into air. I wasn’t sure what to do about it. But there it was.

  I smiled at the radio. “Okay, so see you in about an hour, I’m taking off now.” I looked down at the small red spot of Mario’s canopy, trying to impress the obscure landing area into my brain so I could find it next time I stood up here.

  Fletch and I drove down and around, following a frontage road beside the highway into the graded dirt roads of a drilling operation to get as close as we could to the bottom of the plateau. Mario emerged from the canyon, sweaty, dirty, and glowing. We circled right back up the dirt roads to the top of the Roan and camped in the aspen grove by a small fire as the stars filled the sky and the small round leaves trembled in the darkness. In the morning, it was my turn.

  After making a few more visits with Mario, trading shuttles for each other, I returned with an Australian jumper and his girlfriend, then begged rides from climber friends at Rifle on their rest days. We jumped from the cleanest, nicest exit spot at the center of the wall, where the vertical drop was about five hundred feet, taking a short, Moab-style free fall of two or three seconds before opening the canopy. Falling into that enormous rock bowl, and piloting the parachute to a safe stop in the rugged landing spot, was exhilarating and addictive. I was gaining confidence in my canopy skills, and it was a great feeling.

  The Roan took some organizing because of the long, four-wheel-drive shuttle trip that it required. Soon I got a call from Ted, a local skier from Aspen who had started base jumping too. The Roan was his local cliff, and he was excited to hear that someone else was jumping there regularly. He invited me for a jump together, with the added bonus that we could get dropped off and picked up by a friend of his who wanted to see us jump.

  A professional freestyle skier, Ted was used to moving fast and taking big air, and his approach to base jumping was just as accelerated. He’d been jumping at the Roan from its highest point with a tracking suit. The suit looked like a normal pair of rain pants and a jacket, but it had special venting to inflate in the air, like a scaled-back wingsuit. I had a tracking suit though I’d almost never worn it because whenever a cliff was big enough to track I wore my wingsuit instead. Six hundred feet wasn’t enough altitude to accelerate into a full, terminal-speed track. The Roan Plateau was right in the middle, altitude-wise, a strange height for that reason—a little too short for a terminal jump, a little too tall for a subterminal jump. But it was just enough to feel the suit inflate and get almost a tease of forward speed before it was time to deploy, like an extremely compressed version of a terminal jump.

  Ted had a full array of gear, from motocross body armor under his tracking suit to a video camera mounted on his helmet. He was geared up and ready in minutes. As soon as all cameras were rolling, he took off running at full speed from the cliff, launching aggressively into the air. I watched as he dropped out, getting smaller and smaller, alarmingly close to the talus slope before his parachute finally emerged.

  I pushed the radio button after his canopy had touched down in a tiny spot of color. “How long was your delay?” I wasn’t sure how long I should free fall. Probably not as long as that.

  “Yeah! That was awesome! Let me check my footage, and I can tell you exactly!” In a moment, his radio came back on. “Seven seconds!”

  I looked over at Ted’s friend. “Looks like I’m ready. Thanks for the ride. We’ll see you down there.” I ran off the edge. I counted the seconds in my head, feeling as if I were falling forever, and threw out the pilot chute right at five. I flew over the slopes and ravine and landed next to Ted, flushed with excitement. Wearing the tracking suit and taking the longer delay changed the jump completely. I was hooked on the Roan, even more than before. As we hiked down the ravine, we agreed to come back as soon as we could arrange another driver.

  Within a few days, we were on top of the Roan again. Ted’s fiancée had driven us up, along with a friend we had in common, Chris. Tall, gangly, and puppyish, with messy dark hair, Chris reminded me of my brother both in looks and in easygoing friendliness. His being young and playful was misleading, as he had years of experience jumping as a tandem master in Hawaii. I looked over at Ted and Chris, geared up and ready, and said, “I think I’m going to go.” I never jumped first. Last was my preference.

  “Have a good one, Steph,” Chris said.

  I backed up, the nylon fabric of my tracking suit swishing together, my
boots crushing over small cactus lobes. I took a breath and ran down the dirt slope, into the air. Pale gray limestone filled my eyes as I shot straight out and down. The talus was growing fast. I counted in my mind as I fell—“One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four”—and felt the arms and legs of my suit start to inflate as I gained speed. I could see the rocks on the slope below me, growing.

  I stretched my arms and legs straight back, pointing my toes hard. I was starting to move forward—“… one thousand five, one …”

  My brain stopped counting and my eyes started to do it instead, knowing in some way I couldn’t explain how close I was getting to the ground. I was just on the edge of tasting flight, just passing the zone of subterminal speed into terminal, 120 miles per hour, just feeling my suit inflate and start to turn the fall speed into forward speed. The milliseconds stretched and snapped, like rubber bands. The rocks were getting big in my eyes. I grabbed my pilot chute and threw it into the air.

  The pilot caught the air and pulled the two curved pins free of their loops behind my back, stretching the bridle straight and yanking the folded parachute out of the container. The parachute unfurled in the air, slowed by the mesh slider that zipped down the lines to my shoulders, easing the force of opening. Still, my body snapped with the sudden deceleration, my legs flinging around like a rag doll. I looked up at the canopy, startled at first to see the unfamiliar colors, although I’d packed it myself. It was a Dagger, an old parachute that had belonged to my ex-husband. I always jumped a Flik, a more boxy parachute known for its docility and ease of maneuverability in tight landing areas. But I had the Dagger and an extra container, and I decided it was time to start using it as a second rig, specifically for taller, slider-up jumps like this one. That way I wouldn’t have to take everything apart all the time as I switched between the short Moab jumps and the taller Roan cliffs. I didn’t like taking my parachute lines apart and reattaching them all the time to take the slider on and off. It seemed like an opportunity to make a mistake and cross something up, causing my own rigging malfunction. I didn’t consider that I hadn’t flown the Dagger much, and that it was regarded as a fast, ground-hungry parachute because of its slightly tapered shape.

  The parachute flew forward, the steep, rocky slopes running down below me. I seemed abnormally low, and I felt that I was sinking rather than flying straight forward. The feeling intensified, and I looked up at the canopy, straightening my arms up as much as I could to make sure I wasn’t pulling down on the brake lines somehow. I was definitely sinking. The rocky, tortuous terrain was growing around me. I had to clear this level of the talus, and then it would drop off to the next tier of rocky slopes and trees funneling into the ravine. I wasn’t sure I could make it. Landing here would almost surely be painful.

  My mind flicked backward. Ten seconds ago, a thousand feet ago, a lifetime ago, I was standing on the cliff with Ted and Chris. Ted and I strapped on body armor and our tracking suits. I looked over at Chris, lightly clad in a base rig, T-shirt, and sneakers. “Chris, you don’t even have a helmet?”

  “I had no idea this place was so gnarly,” Chris said lightly. “Well, hopefully it works out.”

  I looked at him doubtfully. “Okay. Well, maybe I should go first so you can see where the landing is, since you’ve never been here.”

  “Only if you want to. I’d be psyched to take photos anyway. I kind of like going last. It’s not as scary when I’m just taking pictures of everyone,” he said playfully.

  “I should go first. It is really hard to even find the landing when you haven’t been here before. It’s nice to see someone down there, to see where it is the first time. I’ll go,” I said. “What do you guys think about the wind?”

  I felt some wind pushing against my face. We hadn’t got up here early today; it had to be at least ten. I wondered what Mario would think about the wind, if he would think it was safe to jump.

  “It’s always windy here,” Ted replied.

  “I think I’m going to go,” I said.

  “Have a good one, Steph,” Chris answered.

  Time looped and circled, pinched and swelled.

  I was in the air. That moment was gone, ten seconds past at the top of the Roan, a place I could never go back to. I’d taken my choice. I looked up at the canopy again, confused. It didn’t seem to be moving. I felt a headwind pushing against me, slowing my forward drive, but the parachute seemed to be sinking at the same time, as if I were pulling down on the brake lines to force it to drop down into the jagged stretch of ravine coming up below me. That was the last thing I wanted to happen. I saw the back of the canopy curved down slightly, though my arms stretched straight to the sky above my head, not pulling the brakes at all. The lines were too short, the length custom-shortened for someone with much longer arms. I hadn’t even thought of that when I started to use it. The canopy was essentially sinking itself. I looked again toward the landing spot, starting to appear farther away and higher. I might not make it.

  I tried to make my body small by pulling my legs up to my chest as I passed low over the end of the talus slope, lessening my surface area against the headwind, trying to penetrate. I didn’t have an alternative landing option in the gnarly, jagged terrain between me and the regular spot. Three-dimensional was a perfect description of this landscape. It was almost disorienting, trying to navigate. The landing spot, about the size of a small living room, hemmed in by cliff walls, hillsides, and a steep drop-off, was perched up and off to the side of the ravine. I had to make it because I was almost guaranteed to get hurt if I didn’t.

  My heart pounded hard as I flew. I seemed to lose an equal amount of height for the distance I slowly gained forward. It was like flooring the gas pedal of a four-cylinder pickup truck on a steep mountain pass, pointlessly leaning into the dash to make it go. I willed the parachute to move as it crept forward. It looked as if I might make it. But then again, maybe I wouldn’t. I couldn’t tell.

  It seemed I’d been under canopy for hours, fixating on the small dirt opening. I couldn’t understand why this was happening. I’d jumped this site six times already, and the parachute flights had gone perfectly. I was getting better at flying, I thought, gauging distance, contours, and height, maneuvering the brake lines to bring myself down softly where I wanted to be. Right now I felt like a helpless victim to the nylon wing over my head. I wasn’t in charge. I was just praying I’d get there.

  The small, rocky landing area came into sight just ahead. Suddenly, the headwind disappeared. To my shock, I lofted upward just as I started moving forward at a normal speed. I’d made it to the landing area, and now I was floating too high above it, with my parachute actually rising upward. I’d never experienced this before, hadn’t even known it was possible. But apparently it was. I needed to make turns, bleed off altitude, and work the parachute down. I couldn’t just fly straight in because I would overshoot the landing and fly into a hillside. I started to maneuver instinctively, making S-turns over the landing zone. Suddenly it was as if I’d traded in my reliable old truck for a Ferrari. Instead of sashaying gently from side to side, losing altitude, the Dagger responded like I was revving the engine, sharply diving into each turn and picking up speed. Even as I struggled to slow my velocity, I realized that choosing this unfamiliar canopy had been a huge mistake. With every turn and sink I made to stay on target, I was picking up speed that I couldn’t lose. Coming in for landing with so much speed could be all right in the soft, grassy runway of a skydiving drop zone. Coming in this fast to the sunbaked, rock-strewn patch would most likely result in smashing myself. I was too close to the ground for the parachute to recover and slow down. I fought panic. Time snapped into hyperdrive. In the final seconds I knew I was going to slam into the sunbaked clay, sloping slightly uphill in front of me. There was no slowing down, no way to escape the future that was speeding at me, just three seconds ahead, when everything would be different.

  Breaking my back had always been my
greatest fear. I consciously tried to relax my body and pull down on the brakes as hard as I could, flaring in the last seconds. My back, I thought. I twisted to the right just as I slammed into the incline, taking the hit on my right flank instead of directly on my lower spine. I didn’t feel any pain, just an incredible feeling of impact. In my mind came the thought My pelvis is broken. I didn’t know how I could possibly know that. I lay on my back on the hard dirt, my head slightly downhill in the helmet, slammed. I heard Ted’s voice over the radio.

  “Are you all right?”

  I fumbled in my pocket for the radio. “I think I’m okay. Just give me a second.”

  Suddenly my whole body hurt. I wiggled my feet. I could move my feet. I bent my toes, feeling them. I could feel my toes. An enormous wave of relief swept over my entire being. It didn’t matter what had happened. I could move my legs. I wanted to get to my feet immediately, to know for sure I didn’t have a spinal injury, to prove it by standing. I knew that was the wrong thing to do. Articles on backcountry medicine and a few wilderness medicine classes had impressed on me that after a hard impact to the back or head, a person should stay still until they can be immobilized and taken to the hospital. A small spinal fracture could turn into a serious spinal cord injury if displaced.

  “Steph, are you all right?” Ted repeated.

  “I think I’m okay! Just give me a second!” I felt stunned. Horrified. Not sure of anything.

  I struggled to my feet, got dizzy and nauseated, and went right back down. But I could feel my legs and feet. I had stood up. I hadn’t crushed my spine. I felt like I had just won the lottery. I knew I shouldn’t have stood up. But I also knew I had, and all I could think was that I was incredibly lucky. Maybe I hadn’t broken my pelvis, maybe I’d be fine in a minute.