Magic Wings Page 10

  They laughed. “OK AldoNova,” said Stormy. “Let’s load em up.

  The road to the top of Walker Mountain was long and it got rougher as we climbed. There were rock slides to cross in four wheel drive. The last mile was on a jeep trail straight up the mountain. Finally we stopped at a little patch of grass in a huge brush field. We were close to the top of the round topped mountain. Stormy parked the truck facing down hill at a precarious angle, with nothing much to stop it if it started rolling until it hit the valley floor two thousand feet below.

  The freeway looked tiny from up there, and the LZ was, indeed, a long, long way in the distance. A little wind blew through the clear, cool sky, sideways across the launch, and I thought, ‘well maybe I’ll get lucky today and I won’t have to fly. Maybe we can drive on down and I can drink beer with the boys all afternoon.’

  Tweedie had a little grin on. He knew what I was thinking.

  “Aldo Nova, huh,” I said to him. I was a little worried about the image that conjured up.

  “Don’t worry,” said Tweedie. “You’ve survived quite a while. It must mean Death doesn’t want you. You’ve given him plenty of chances.”

  We sat on the launch crunching peanuts and chips like grazing cattle, and we watched the wind blow sideways through the grass.

  “Don’t worry,” said Tweedie again, looking at me. It’ll be straight up the hill at ten to fifteen in an hour.” He was referring to the wind. “See that little cloud forming over that distant ridge. That’s a wave from the low pressure out at sea. It’s moving this way.”

  I wasn’t pleased with the news.

  “I’ll bet you anything it’ll be here within an hour.” Tweedie looked at Duke and Stormy hoping to find someone to take him up on his bet.

  “Yeah, bullshit Tweedie,” said Stormy. “These weather patterns we’ve been having set up for weeks at a time. That wave is going to ride right up over the top of the high pressure. You'd have to be at six thousand feet in order to take advantage of it. I’ll bet you anything we’ll be driving down. What a stupid idea to come all the way up here in August! This place never works in August.”

  “Just wait sucker,” said Tweedie. “You’ll see!”

  “What do you wanna bet on it,” said Stormy chuckling.

  “You boys sound like a bunch of idiots,” said Duke. “You’re both wrong. I think the afternoon thermals are going to overpower this prevailing wind pretty soon. I ain’t waiting around for any storm wave. I think it’s time to set ‘em up! I’ll be at ten thousand feet before you finish chewing your cud.”

  When Duke started setting up, I started setting up too. I had decided that it would be even more of a drag to drive down the bumpy mountain road than it would be to fly.

  “See those heat waves off the freeway,” Duke told me confidentially as we worked on our gliders. “It’s getting warm down there. And it’s cold up here. There are going to be some heletious thermals bubbling up, and pretty soon.”

  I was nervous but excited. I took great care putting together the glider. I always took great care, but this time I looked at all the tubes and wires even more closely. I tried to be conscious of the smallest unevenness in a tube’s dimension, or a rough spot in any wire. But I could find no problem.

  When our two gliders were almost ready, Stormy came over and unloaded his wing from the truck. “Shit,” he said. “I’m not gonna sit here and let the two of you have all the fun of rigging and unrigging and loading gliders back on the truck again.”

  So all three of us constructed our gliders, then we went back to chewing peanuts and chips on the mountain side. The wind continued to blow from the side of the launch area.

  An hour went by.

  Then two.

  “You’re looking pretty stupid,” Stormy’s comment was directed at Tweedie. “I told you this was a no-fly day.”

  “Aw, shut up,” said Tweedie. “It’s coming slower that I thought, but it’ll still be here. Just you wait.”

  “I should have placed a bet,” said Stormy. “I’d be a rich man by now if you coughed up ten bucks for every time you made a fool of yourself.”

  Duke was laying back under his glider now, to keep the sun out of his eyes. “You still have time to shake on it,” he said. “I’m going to be out there in the air in ten minutes.”

  It was four o'clock and the sun was beginning to cast shadows of the mountains on the valley floor now.

  “You’re on,” said Stormy. “ Ten minutes. At 4:10 you owe me ten bucks.”

  Duke sat up and looked around, re-analyzing the situation. “OK”. He reached out his hand.

  Stormy shook it.

  Duke stood up and put on his flight suit. Then his helmet. Then he hooked up to his glider and turned the glider to face the valley. The wind was blowing sideways, then the flag that Tweedie had placed on the mountain side there, went limp. Then it twittered from the left. Then from the right.

  Everyone watched intensely. It was 4:09. The flag dropped limp again. Suddenly Duke raced down hill toward the dead air. He ran panting and wheezing until there was no more grass to run on and he got off the ground barely enough to clear some bushes with his feet. Then he laid prone in his harness and barely cleared some small trees with his control bar. But he did finally become free of the ground.

  “That idiot,” said Stormy. “He could have killed himself.” He looked in his wallet to see if there was a ten dollar bill.

  Duke didn’t gain any elevation and headed out toward the freeway. In two minutes he arrived over the traffic with a thousand feet of elevation. He flew a little further toward the landing area. In a bubble of hot air off the pavement, he began to rise up. We all stood up to watch, at attention.

  “Aw. Look at that guy, “ said Tweedie.

  “God-dammit. He’s an idiot,” said Stormy.

  “Look at that!” I said.

  Duke was circling in a huge thermal and soon was higher than we were. Stormy and I both grabbed our flight suits and as fast as we could, we hooked onto our hang gliders. Duke’s thermal was working it’s way toward us. He was approaching us fast as we lined up, hoping to take off.

  I was grinding my teeth in anticipation. There was no way I was going to try a no wind launch like the one Duke had succeeded in making. It was too risky. The flag in the launch area was still laying limp.

  As Duke came overhead a couple hundred feet above us, he screamed something at us. It sounded rude, but I couldn’t make out the words.

  Suddenly, his thermal made our limp flag twitter. Then it began to blow in earnest up the hill. Stormy didn’t hesitate and charged into the wind. Then, as quickly as I could safely follow, I ran to chase after him.

  For a few seconds, we both climbed away from the ground. Then what little lift we could nurture, out of the lee side of the thermal Duke was riding on, died out. And we headed for the freeway, where another bubble might be brewing.

  I was down close enough to the cars, by the time I got over the pavement, that I had started to make some tentative and unwanted plans for landing on the center divider between traffic lanes. And I began to grip the control bar tensely, though I knew a light touch was important, to feel what the air was up to. I told myself to relax, though the thought of a freeway landing gave me a horrible feeling. I wished that I’d never come along that day to Walker Mountain. I knew it was a bad idea when Duke had told me the hazards there.

  It was apparently a caravan of diesel trucks that finally kicked some warm air loose from the ground. I became surrounded by the rising bubble. My wing wires and sail tightened and I began to rise, not spectacularly fast, but I was going up. I turned very gently, so as not to spill the lift. I turned to parallel the freeway.

  When I was at a safe altitude and could see over a row of trees to the landing area, I took a deep breath and blew out hard with relief. I ended up at a steady thousand feet off the ground, and could get no higher, but now I was comfortable, riding silently along above the traffic; thousands of cars of
all colors, in procession to somewhere or nowhere, like a child’s road race set.

  For a long time I road along above the freeway, then when I was feeling too far from the landing area, I turned and flew back the other direction. Stormy was there, passing beside me occasionally, in his white and blue glider. Duke had disappeared and was no where to be seen.

  Cars and trucks went by on the freeway, in both directions, then they disappeared around the corners of the mountain range. Did they see us up there watching, or did all the drivers have their heads down and their stereos cranked up and the stress of Earthly life drumming away in their subconscious world? And why was I , who appeared to be nothing more than an air junky addicted to adrenalin, making stress for myself by setting fourth, launching into the huge ocean, invisible home of the wind gods? And was I passing judgment on the inhabitants of the Earth from my lofty position? I would have to rejoin the masses of people and touch the ground soon myself, so I stopped myself from analyzing the driver’s motives.

  For a moment, my flight was like a dream, and when I touched down on Earth, that dream was instantly forgotten as I awoke.

  I had to follow Stormy closely into a landing flight pattern. The uplifting air had died suddenly. When we both flew over the last row of trees, the flag below in the field was blowing toward us so we zig zagged at the near end of the field until we lost most of our altitude. Stormy was below me a couple of turns. I hoped that he would land and have time to move out of the way before I needed to land. We wouldn’t be more than a minute separated.

  As he made a final approach, his wing flattened out close to the ground, plowed along until it slowed near the car we had parked at the edge of the field. I stopped paying attention to his landing and concentrated on my own, which would be coming soon. If I crashed into him it would be dumb, bad luck. Right now though, I had to make an accurate approach.

  Fifty feet up, over one end of the field, I sped up the glider to increase my control over it, then I made my final turn. Racing down along the field, I came within touching distance form the ground. I leveled out the glider and let my speed slow down to a jog. When the glider stalled and I pushed out to stop myself, the sail was heavy and its weight shoved me down onto the ground where I began sprinting, trying to keep from stumbling. I did stumble on the grass and plowed head first into the field. I was only a few yards from Stormy.

  I lifted my head up to talk. “I followed you in’, I grinned sheepishly.

  “Don’t ever follow,” he said. “Pay attention to the flags.”

  Lost Creek

  Lost Creek flows into the Rogue River at a man made lake built in the bottom of a steep, lava sided canyon. One winter I completed my scuba certification by diving into its murky ice water. The lake looks clear from the surface, but the visibility underwater is fifteen feet at best. A friend who lived on the tropical island of Rota, brought scuba gear back to the mainland and a couple of times he dove into the Pacific near here. He advised me that swimming underwater in cold murk was decidedly unpleasant. That has been my own experience too. While I was immersed in Lost Creek Lake with a scuba instructor, feeling very stupid for not waiting to get certified in much warmer water, with ice seeping in through the seems of the thick wet suit, and only a few square inches of my face exposed to the open water, numb and aching, I met people who were actually enthused about getting in the lake. They would compete to see how deep they could go, or they would brag to their friends about how they couldn’t see their hands in front of their face down there in the gloom. There was one guy who slapped me on the back that winter while it was snowing on the beech and said “I’m headed for Coos Bay next week. The diving’s real cool there. We usually get some scallops or a halibut. The visibility’s terrible there so you have to stay real calm. The sharks can smell you if you cut yourself but you’d never see them coming. Wanna come? It’ll be great!”

  No matter where I’ve been or what I’ve been doing, there’s always someone trying to get me to participate in something that I would consider incredibly uncomfortable. When I lived in the farthest away place, surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness, I was a lot younger. Sometimes, out of boredom I guess, friends would come to collect me and haul me out into rainy, cold and miserable weather, to go for a walk or paddle down a river.

  There seems to be a masochist in almost every one. It brings people out in the most ridiculous situations, into god forsaken places, for entertainment. I did go along for the experience now and then, for friendship, adventure, or because there was nothing to do, and looking back, I am no worse off for it.

  But I have also swam in warm, tropical waters and have watched in amazement the beautifully colored fish do their mating dances in comfortable water where there seemed no bounds to the visibility. The thought of adventure in comfort makes it harder for me to face the reality of the Oregon climate. I find, more and more, that I am not drawn to the same situations as my peers.

  Lost Creek Lake in summer looked pleasant and inviting from a cliff high above the lake surface. Speed boats meandered around on it, painting ripples on the water which smoothed out shortly until another boat came along. A hot breeze meandered up the Rogue River canyon and found the cliff in its path, so it whisked out toward the universe there. I sat on the cliff edge, my feet dangling over, watching the green lake and its crescent shaped dam, the distant boats on the water, the surrounding Cascade Mountain foothills. I was wondering why I wasn’t swimming in wild water while the short season allowed for it. But Duke and Stormy had persisted, and I had mentioned a long time before that I wanted to see the hang glider launch at that spot, in a moment of exhilaration following a flight in which I had survived yet another calamity. Duke, Stormy and Tweedie all had agreed that a Lost Creek flight was the most beautiful of them all, and I would be flabbergasted by the view if I was lucky enough to soar up over the mountain top and into the air conditioned upper atmosphere.

  I made myself content to sit there and I left my glider in its bag, sitting on the ground behind me. Stormy and Duke seemed in no hurry either.

  Stormy sat down next to me with a canned beer in his hand and sipped on it. “The trouble with this launch is that you’ve got to step out over this cliff at some point, and that makes some people feel a little disconcerted. But you can’t hesitate, because if you do, you’ll stall the glider and end up on those rocks.” He sipped the beer again.” I just keep my eyes straight ahead. Just don’t look down. And just make sure you keep the wing pointed at the lake so the wind blowing straight up on the cliff doesn’t rip the control bar out of your hands. I don’t mean to make it sound really scary. This is your first cliff launch and I want to make sure you don’t make me waste my day cleaning up your guts off those boulders down there.”

  “I can’t believe you drink before you fly.” Duke was munching on some cheap sugar cookies. “Bucky used to guzzle a few, and finally he guzzled some dirt. And what about that crash you had last summer? You don’t even remember that, do you? “

  Stormy grinned showing his missing front tooth. “You’re just too damn serious about life, Duke boy. When are you gonna loosen up and have some fun. You want a beer Aldo Nova. Come on now. It’s ten feet away in the cooler. Go for it.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I fly crappy enough with all my senses.”

  “I’m only talking one beer. It’s not like you’ll be driving a car out there. There’s no one else to worry about but yourself. It’s the wide open spaces, “ said Stormy enthusiastically.

  Duke changed the subject. “Hey, I’ve been thinking about flying Yosemite next summer. You guys wanna go.? We have to make reservations because they only allow a few people a day to fly there.”

  “Yeah, I’ll go,” said Stormy.

  “Not me, ”I said. “I’m not ready for a four thousand foot cliff launch. That’d be like sticker shock or culture shock. One second you’re on solid ground and the next second your a mile in outer space. I don’t think my heart could take it. Sounds
like it would be an awesome view though. I’ve hiked around there a lot.”

  “I’ve been flying a lot of years,” Duke said. “Yosemite’s something every hang glider pilot should do at least once in their lifetime.”

  “So what do you think about this launch here,” I said to Duke.

  “It’ll put you fifty feet above the treetops in two steps. Yeah, there's a bite to it,” said Duke. “I just wait on the edge and pretend I’m already flying. When I have a good image of myself flying nice and smooth and steady, with my eyes straight out ahead, I run like hell. Don’t look down. You won’t really notice that the ground is gone if you do it right.

  “ I’ll do the same thing at Yosemite. I don’t think I’ll have a problem launching there, even though it seems like it ought to be intimidating. It’d be a long drop if you screwed up though. It’d give you a lot of time to think before you hit the ground.”

  “When are you thinking of going there?” Stormy swigged the last of his beer and burped. “I think the wind’s best for launching there in spring”

  “Don’t know yet,” said Duke. “I don’t know how much longer I can handle this job I’ve been doing. The boss has been running off to Hawaii and has been sticking a lot of coke up his nose. He’s wasted all the company profits and I don’t think he’ll be in business much longer. If I have to get a new job, they may not want me taking off on a long vacation.”

  “Man,” said Stormy. “Your life sure takes a bunch of planning. I can’t imagine how you live in that squirrel nest where everyone tells you what to do all the time. Why don’t you go mow lawns or something. The little old ladies with the postage stamp lawns might get a little miffed if you let their lawns get a little too long, but they’re not going to fire you for taking a little break.”