Photo credit ©John Wilson
I am afraid of heights. Terribly afraid. I have nightmares of falling from mountains. Flying dreams usually end in crashing dreams. My insane fear of falling is probably why my eldest son thought his name was “Get Down Off Of There”. I like to imagine a fleet of helium balloon-carrying angels supporting the wings of airplanes I fly on.
When I was a young teenager living in a prairie town, I had to pass the time-honoured test of walking across the railway bridge over the river. Every step was torture; I could look between the ties to the river below and the sense of vertigo was almost overwhelming. Had it not been for the mocking I would have suffered at the hands of my peers-more damaging than the plunge into the icy waters below-I would have crawled happily back to ground-level ground. Still, I did it. I crossed it. It took me a half an hour to go 50 metres, but I crossed that bridge.
And I have tried to hug the ground ever since.
Which is what makes it so astounding that I found myself staring over the edge of a steep drop-off near Golden, B.C. last week with what seemed to be an insufficient amount of cloth strapped to my back. You see, I somehow convinced myself that paragliding was exactly the adventure for me.
For those not in the know, paragliding is a strange and wonderful pasttime that involves wind, thermals, a parachute-like canopy and a certain disregard for peril. When the weather is right, enthusiasts hurl themselves from mountain tops and attempt to stay aloft with fabric, warm air and a seemingly wanton defiance of gravity.
The first hurl is always done with an expert secured to one’s back. The second and third hurls come later.
To launch oneself into the air, the pair of paragliders runs down a steep incline in tandem, waiting for the canopy to be caught by the wind and gravity to be flipped the bird, so to speak. Defying logic and instinct, I managed to do exactly this. Whether it was bravery or a man who weighed slightly more than I do running behind me, I can’t say for certain, but there I went. I ran. I jumped, and just like that-to quote John Gillespie Magee-I slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.
Photo credit ©Madame Fabulous
It turns out that leaving the ground behind is remarkably easy. We dipped. We soared. We topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace. It was almost poetic.
Until I noticed that we were going in circles rather a lot. You see, it turns out that height is only one small part of my neurosis. I may have been able to convince my head that gravity held no dominion over me but my stomach was having no part of it.
To make an embarrassing story no less embarrassing (but only slightly shorter), I may have-to put it politely-jettisoned some cargo midflight. Twice. There may be people who were a few thousand feet below me who were concerned about the strange and possibly biblical weather they were experiencing. But in my defense, I was very ladylike about the divulging of my stomach’s contents; I did say “excuse me” after all.
On ground, I shakily but resolutely thanked my instructor for an amazing flight. It was an unparalleled view of the Columbia Valley and-aside from the spinny spinny-very enjoyable. I said I’d recommend it to everyone I knew. I said that the experience was unforgettable. I said that I was so very glad I had done it. And then I excused myself and wobbled to the bathroom. Where I performed amazing feats of acrobatics as I dislodged dinners that I had digested in previous decades.
Still, I would do it again. I may, provided I can find the right medication to calm my turbulent tummy. Because perhaps I’m not as afraid of heights as I thought. Perhaps I’m really just afraid of widths, and the rapid circling of them.
If that makes me shallow, I can live with that.
Madame Fabulous–otherwise known as MadFab (more fab than mad)–has been a professional writer, actor, director, producer, occasional photographer and painter for most of her adult life. Her mother would argue that she’s been a drama queen from the get-go, however. She is a mother to three: Alexa, Theo and Ethan who she blames for the eternal house messiness, the ongoing pantry emptiness, the perpetual head-shaking oddness and the lifelong happiness. She was very recently married to the man who, for the record, she totally pegged as “That Guy” from the start.
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