Skydancer Skydiving at Davis Regional Airport (Yolo County, California)

The buildup to doing this was almost unsettling. As the date approached, I forced my mind to focus on the exact moment that I would turn loose of the plane. This seemed to work, as I was calm through the entire affair. Training was given, preparations were made, and then we were off. Of my two companion adventure-seekers, only one gathered enough courage to follow through with the jump

As I leaned out over the plane’s exit hatch with my instructor tied to my back and the parachute to his, I thought, “If there is a moment when my courage might falter, this will be it.” I have always told myself I am not afraid of anything; not death, not pain. In this, my moment of truth, I held my ground and did not hesitate to look danger and death straight in the eye. When the instructor gave the signal, I allowed myself to fall out of the plane, which was 13,000 feet above the surface of the Earth.

The experience of plummeting to Earth from over two miles straight up and at over 120 mph is enlightening. Never in my life have I felt so at peace with myself and the universe.  As I assumed that my thoughts would be of death and remembering the greatest times of my life, I was totally wrong. My thoughts were of nothing at all. For perhaps the first time in my life, my mind was at rest; not a whisper, not an image. The reality that I have always been a part of and I were finally one.

The falling itself is not falling at all, nor is it like flying. It is just floating. I did not get the feeling from the bottom of my gut that is normally associated with falling. I did not perceive the rapidly approaching ground as a danger. It all just seemed like normal motion, with the exception that the horizon was now circular at a glance as opposed to being a horizontal line.

When we reached 6500 feet, the instructor signaled me to prepare to pull the ripcord. I began watching the altimeter fastened to my wrist and at 5200 feet I reached back and triggered the life preserver that would allow us to safely touch down to Earth once again. In total, the freefall was about 60 seconds, but time had no meaning for me, as I was outside of time. After the chute successfully opened, we glided to the surface at a comfortable rate for the next five minutes or so. It seemed as though we were just hanging from the heavens. Shortly thereafter, we made a perfect landing, which is to say we slid along the drop zone landing area on our rumps. 

After a day’s worth of soreness, it was gone and the memory of the ordeal was safely tucked away in my memory banks and in this journal. One more checkmark has been placed on my “Life’s to-do list.”