The Cessna 172 had only one seat.
After twenty minutes the plane had climbed two miles high. The clouds were thin in the summer sky and it was a beautiful day for a jump. We were slowly circling our target on the ground when Laura slid open the door of the plane, and in rushed a flood of wind and light and sound.
For Laura this would be her three hundredth jump. It was my first, with a tandem master behind me, and Laura as a solo. We were to fall together and link up in the air, and then separate again before our parachutes opened.
As part of the feat, Laura would step out of the plane. While holding onto a wing strut, standing on one of the landing wheels, her back turned to the roaring prop behind her, she would wait for us to roll out, and then she would follow.
As our time approached, the tandem master and I sidled up to the door. He tugged the pilot’s shoulder, cueing him to tip the plane until the wheel was out of our path. I wasn’t concerned before about the altitude, the open door, or the propeller at Laura’s back. But as gravity gripped me a sense of tempting fate came rushing in with the wind.
But there was no time left to think.
To the count of one and two, we rocked to and fro on hands and knees. And on three we tucked and rolled, head first, out of the plane. Like unearthed stones, we fell into an element that now seemed foreign and unknown.
Free falling into light and a racing wind, sometimes first-timers begin running in mid-air. I hadn’t panicked. Instead, arms out and legs straight, we stopped tumbling and righted ourselves quickly.
Then it was as if I was all alone, hanging between the earth and the moon, suspended in the blue, nothing but the horizon to see.
As the air spills over you, telling stories across your face, your gear flails violently in the current. My body bent with the pressure of the wind, but with subtle movements, we maneuvered through the air with a rough grace.
Then Laura appeared from above.
Dropping into sight forty yards ahead, the wind was pummeling her hard. She was working her way in to us, working her legs, folded or straight to steer her forward. Wrapped up tight in her blue dive suit, she was barely recognizable from the wind. But it was clear, even at distance, she was wearing a huge grin.
As a solo jumper, she was much more manueverable than our tandem pair. She approached with great skill, careful not to rush in.
Although we were tumbling like seeds in a gust, for that moment we were shooting stars.
With her last lunge forward we were so close;
her wind-chilled hands on mine were a warm harbor.
We had fallen for less than a minute, and connected for barely a moment. At one hundred and twenty miles per hour, the connection was an elevation. Free falling and without address, as if the world had stopped and we were suspended in light.
Where life pummels you until you surrender, to moments one after another, blinding you with speed, filling you with breath, with room to breathe and to spare. To hold fast to something warm and familiar.
And as quick as that, Laura released and waved off, and sped away from me into space.
. . . . .
It was time to deploy our chute. As our pull chute trailed out first, there came a violent burst of sound, like a shotgun at your ear, and a sense of full contact with gravity. The parachute had opened into a great tent in the blue.
The impact was stunning. The relentless wind had gone silent, and my ears were ringing from the burst. Everything was in slow motion as I watched Laura leaving.
As if a shot from a cannon, she fell away at an astonishing speed. She plummeted so far and so fast she was utterly gone from sight within three seconds. She had vanished into the blue, a wisp of wind, the seed of a cloud, a drop of rain.
I caught my breath.
As the horizon swung side to side beneath us, I watched for her chute to open. Long moments passed as I strained to see against the bright ground any movement, a betrayal of motion, a shadow moving.
There was nothing familiar, only the strange blue.
I was sick with an adrenaline high. I had swung from an intense high to the limpness of a laundry line. As the tandem master and I floated at our tethers, neither of us spoke. The sky absorbed everything.
My exhilaration had turned to heaviness and the ride down seemed to never end.
. . . . .
Then, still high up, as we approached the chalk circle on the ground, I could see a faint movement beneath us. At the edge of sight, but clear as a bead of dew in the light, was Laura’s blue chute, dead on center to the target, still falling, and still far, far away. The dead air that had held me captive before then filled my lungs with life. The adrenaline returned with renewed purpose.
Our steering was approximate, yet precise, like driving a team of horses through snow. It seemed forever before we landed too, squarely in the center of the circle target.
. . . . .
No one had thought to mention that she would fall much farther and faster as a solo diver––
Laura was there waiting, and a sweet reunion bloomed in that chalk circle.
A lightness came over me I can’t describe. I don’t remember what was said. A spark of happiness flashed. Slaps on the back. Congratulations. Embracing and glad handing. A bright flare of joy rose and passed as we stirred the dust in falling sheets.
And at last, we sighed and stepped out of the circle. As we rolled up the silks, squinted into the dusk and walked away it was a return to dust, to silence, and to heaviness. My legs were dead and limp, my shoulders stung, my back ached. My feet counted every pace.
From the circle’s edge the sun was already setting, and our footsteps left no trace. Light rushed away until the mica underfoot was as dull as dust, and hills spotted with countless trees dimmed into one long line. The deepening sky flooded the valleys with silence, filling the hills with weight.
Gravity had stolen even our light.
