The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson
A few months went by and John, recently out of plaster and annoyed at missing out on his Spanish flying holiday, suggested we go back to Piedrahita for another quick trip. This time the weather and the flying were superb. One day as I was sinking into the middle of the valley almost 3000 feet below my take-off point on the ridge overlooking Piedrahita I remembered something John had mentioned to me about ‘trigger points’. These could be anything from a group of boulders, a tower on a ridge, the roof tiles of a village or even different coloured fields. They acted as trigger points where thermals broke free of the earth and rose up in warm columns of air drifting back on the breeze. My variometer had been emitting a constant depressing drone indicating how fast I was sinking. As I neared the ground and began searching for a good landing field free from high-powered cables and tall trees I noticed a dark patch of ground, a sort of earthy hillock just to the right of the town’s bull-ring. This had been one of the ‘trigger points’ that John had pointed out to me. I turned towards it, flying to its downwind side, feeling dubious about the chances of getting a saving climb from this low in the valley.
Suddenly the leading edge of my canopy buckled on the left side and the wing tip momentarily tucked beneath itself. I kept pressure on the right brake handle to maintain my direction and watched as the wing tip popped out again. I had flown into a thermal. It was small, tight and punchy and as I turned into its centre and began to circle as tightly as I could. I was delighted to hear the variometer making a rapid high-pitched pipping noise. I did not need it to tell me I was climbing. It felt as if I had been sitting in the armchair comfort of my harness and suddenly a huge hand had reached down and hauled me bodily upwards. The initial violent lift had thrown me to one side and my heart was hammering as I shot skywards. I had never done anything like it before and was at once exhilarated and apprehensive. As I gained height the thermal became smoother and wider and easier to core. I glanced at my vario, which at times was showing a climbing rate of 1600 feet per minute. I looked around to see if there were any other canopies in the thermal but I was alone. I relaxed a little, glad to know I didn’t have to contend with a gaggle of up to forty wings searching and circling above the take-off zone in a hectic chaotic multi-coloured mass where I would have been terrified of a mid-air collision. I can enjoy this, I thought, as I flew inexpertly out of the back of the thermal and felt the canopy bang over in a partial collapse as it was hit by the rapidly sinking air.
Soon I had climbed 3500 feet and could see that I was in the centre of the wide valley leading towards the pass cutting through the hills to the west. I wondered whether I should head back for the comfort of the ridge line and almost immediately bounced exuberantly into another powerful thermal and began to spin upwards. As I approached the pass I began to worry about whether I had the experience to be doing this sort of flying. I tried to remember how much height above take-off John had said I needed to clear the pass safely. If I crossed without enough height I would risk being caught by fast sinking air and turbulent rotor on the other side. John had warned me that a pilot had broken his ankle in a hard landing doing just that the previous year. What had he said? I couldn’t for the life of me remember. I was using all the concentration I could muster simply to keep flying. I began to feel stressed and anxious. Three thousand feet above take-off. That was it. So where am I now? I glanced at my vario. Five hundred feet above take-off. It’s not enough. I had to find another climb. I hit sinking air and the vario began its depressing drone, then stopped: silence for a moment, then a pip, another pip, then another. Come on, come on, catch me, I muttered to the invisible thermal – and it did.
Swinging in wide climbing circles I watched two large birds of prey circling below me. Their wing-tip flight feathers moved imperceptibly as they rode the rising air. Suddenly I saw another paraglider sweeping in from my left. He had seen me catch the thermal and had glided straight for my position.
We hung opposite each other, exactly level, carving great sweeping circles through the sky. Sometimes it felt as if we were still and the world was spinning around us and I had to look away. I was laughing as we rose, then swearing as I fell out of the back of the thermal again and I had to scratch around the sky looking for lift. I was keenly aware of my incompetence, especially when I next looked for my companion, only to see him far to the west thousands of feet above the pass and heading for Avila.
I remember looking down between my legs at one point and suddenly being overwhelmed with a sense of vertigo. The unwelcome thought popped into my mind that I was sitting in a nylon seat hanging by silk-thin kevlar lines above 7000 feet of empty space. What if they snapped? For a moment I had this horrific image of plunging down to the valley floor before reason took over. Of course they won’t snap, you idiot! And even if they did you would just throw your reserve. I immediately let go of my right brake toggle and reached back to the right side of my harness, searching for the reserve deployment handle. It came comfortingly into my hand and I mentally rehearsed what I would have to do. Pull the strap out and forward and then swing it back and throw it vigorously behind me. The packed circular emergency canopy would sail out and deploy almost instantly. Or so the theory goes, I cautioned myself.
I grabbed the right brake toggle and continued flying towards the pass. Glancing at my vario I could see I had reached an altitude of 10,500 feet. It meant I was at least 4000 feet above take-off and there was no good reason not to attempt the pass. I straightened my flight, lessened the pressure on the brakes and pressed my feet against the speed bar in an effort to gain the best glide.
An hour later I found myself sinking steadily into the Avila valley. I had not only crossed the pass but flown a total of 30 kilometres from my take-off point. It was strange how the moment I had stopped thinking about trying to stay in the air I had immediately begun to sink. I had suddenly realised how drained I felt from the flight. All I had wanted to do was cross the pass and I had exceeded my hopes beyond all expectation. I knew an experienced pilot would have done it in half the time and would now be intent on reaching Avila, a further 20 kilometres up the long broad valley stretching to the west. I was content to fly gently down and land.
I came into a soft landing in a sandy ploughed field and was astounded at how weak and wobbly-legged I felt the moment the stress of flying had gone. I hadn’t appreciated how physically exhausting and mentally taxing flying could be. I was drenched in sweat and my neck ached from constantly craning it to the left. I shrugged the harness off my shoulders, unclipped the leg straps and let it fall to the ground. I turned and looked back at the pass and it suddenly dawned on me what I had done. I had just had my first really good flight. I had never experienced anything like it in my life. There was a mixture of exultation and unsteady relief, of delight and fading fear. My legs were trembling and I felt shaky so I knelt in the soil.
I suddenly understood what Tat had been doing and why and it overwhelmed me for a moment. I did not know whether I was crying for Tat or at the wonder of what I had just experienced. I could fly. It seemed pretty damned special.
John had warned me that there were fighting bulls bred for the bull-ring in some fields and it was worth looking out for them. They were extremely dangerous. He had once landed in an apparently empty field and had almost packed up his wing when he saw a dark shape suddenly rise from a tree-shadowed corner of the field. The bull charged with furious speed and John had only just managed to throw his wing, harness and himself over a dry-stone wall topped with barbed wire before the beast had reached him.
I was walking wearily towards the main road where I hoped to hitch a lift back to Piedrahita when I heard the sound of drumming hooves. I glanced wildly around but couldn’t see anything. I was in a grassy field planted with an orchard of fruit trees. I ran towards the nearest tree hoping to be able to jump up and grab the lower branches. It wouldn’t be easy with fifty pounds of paragliding equipment in a huge unwieldy rucksack on my back. As the hoof beats became louder I knew I had no cha
A foal and a grey horse galloped into the grove of trees in which I was cowering and wheeled round in an excited rush, whinnying and snorting and then galloping off through the trees. I sank to my knees and began to laugh.
As I sat in one hundred degrees of blazing sunshine watching Spanish motorists blithely ignoring both the speed limit and my out-stretched thumb I thought about the flight and what I had done wrong and how I could improve.
There was so much to learn. I thought of Tat and all the fun we had enjoyed. He was gone. We could do nothing about it. It was his time. I remembered the words of the Blessing for the Dead that I must have learned as a child:
Blessed are the dead
for they have been given wings to fly
and not dwell upon the earth.
Yes, I thought thinking of Tat, that seems about right, kid.
I remembered the first verse of Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem ‘The Windhover’. It seemed to evoke everything that was wondrous and life-enhancing about flying. Tat would have appreciated it:
I caught this morning’s minion, kingdom
of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in
his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he hung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and
Gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of
the thing!
5 The coldest dance
The plane was descending into Newark Airport, New York, on its final approach and I sat peering out of the window at the lights of the city and the last flare of the sun on a darkening horizon of gold-layered clouds. As the runway came into view and the airport lights sparkled against the night sky I braced myself for the landing. I had never been a particularly keen air traveller but in recent years I had been forced to do so much of it that now I only became fraught during take-off and landings. There was a hum of surprised conversation as we climbed back into the air and began a series of wide sweeping turns above and to the east of the airport. I assumed that we were in a stack of other aircraft queueing above the airport awaiting their landing windows. I presumed that our aborted landing was due to some shuffling in this queue allowing a flight with a fuel shortage to get in before us. It was a fairly common occurrence so for forty-five minutes I thought no more about it.
At last my hangover was beginning to recede and the liverish nausea induced by a night of tequila and beer was fading. I was thinking wistfully about the last week of lecturing and ice climbing in Colorado and planning a return visit to Boulder the following year with Ray and Tat when the pilot interrupted my thoughts.
‘Good evening, ladies and gentleman, this is your captain speaking,’ he announced in a languid Texan drawl. ‘As some of you may have noticed we did pull out of a landing attempt and we are now running a little late this evening. I assure you there is nothing to worry about.’
That made me sit bolt upright. When the captain of the plane who hasn’t uttered a word in the entire flight from Denver International Airport suddenly announces that there is nothing to worry about it is usually time to get seriously worried.
‘As we made our final approach, an undercarriage warning light was indicating a problem,’ he continued congenially. ‘It is not something to worry about. Just a slight technical hitch, probably a circuitry problem, that’s all. We believe the wheels are down and locked but this little ole light keeps saying it ain’t. So we’re just being careful up here tonight, folks, and as you can see we are circling to bleed off fuel.’
Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I muttered. You don’t bleed off fuel unless you have got a problem worth worrying about.
‘So, ladies and gentleman, we are going to make a low pass across the tower so they can get a good look-see at our wheels. Don’t be alarmed when we climb back up. This is not an attempt at landing. Relax and enjoy the ride and we apologise for the delay this has caused.’
Relax! He must be barking mad! I glanced around the cabin and was not reassured. No one was looking especially relaxed, I noticed. There was a buzz of conversation and I saw people glancing around surreptitiously just as I was doing, trying to work out how relaxed they should really be. Not very, by the looks of it. I pulled my seat belt tighter and pressed my face to the window. We began a long gliding descent and I felt my stomach tighten.
I switched on my personal stereo. Bob Marley was singing ‘No Woman, No Cry’.
My fear is my only courage
So I’m going to have to push on through …
Everything’s go’n’ to be all right, Everything’s go’n’ to be all right …
Is it buggery! I thought and turned the machine off. I tried to un-worry myself by thinking of some utterly useless facts by way of a distraction. I had read somewhere that they had once used aircraft to try and prove Einstein’s theory of relativity. Apparently in a transatlantic flight time warps by about 49 nanoseconds, whatever that was. This has been timed by flying atomic clocks around the world to prove that Einstein was correct. In effect his theory means that the faster you travel, the slower time moves. Is this why, when you are falling to your death, it seems to take a very long time? I tried to ignore this unwelcome diversion. To put it into perspective, if you live for 100 years and spend your entire life flying around the world in an airliner then you can expect to be one 100,000th of a second younger. Wow! So that means if you live fast then you die older? And the whole notion of living fast and dying young is therefore completely wrong, in fact the whole thing is counter-intuitive; it is not what we would think. Where does that get me?
We swooped across the airport and then rose smoothly into the sky again. Everyone waited expectantly for the captain’s words of wisdom. He cheerfully came back on air.
‘Well, folks, the good news is that the wheels are down.’ There was a general hubbub of exhaled breaths and excited comments. ‘However,’ he continued, silencing everyone instantly. ‘We still have this little ole light telling us the gear is not locked.’ There was an ominous silence from the cabin and the passengers generally shuffled around, fiddled with seat belts, put shoes on and then took them off again, peered out the windows, and avoided all and any eye contact.
I tried to get back to the ‘useless fact’ distraction ploy. Most people would think that hard-core porn or a sadistic and violent video nasty would be the most common source of fantasy material for serial killers but no, it is the Bible. In fact, the Book of Revelations is a special favourite. Now who would have thought that and aren’t some folks just plain weird?
I noticed that the plane seemed to be lining up with the airport. Did you know, I asked myself, distractedly, that basking sharks take about fifteen years to reach sexual maturity at which point they are just about the right size to be worth hunting? So just when they are looking forward to losing their virginity they get harpooned and turned into pet food. The liver oil of a basking shark is so fine that it is used in the lubrication of precise navigational instruments in modern jet airliners. I wonder how many livers of horny basking sharks we are about to splatter over the runway?
‘Ladies and gentleman,’ the captain drawled in his relaxed and inanely cheerful manner. It was beginning to irritate me. ‘We are on our final approach now and should be on the ground in about ten minutes’ time. There is nothing to worry about so if you’ll just make sure that your seat belts are securely fastened I’d like to thank you for flying with us this evening and wish you a very pleasant onward journey.’
Fat chance of that, I thought. And why is he so damn cheerful? Remember, when someone annoys you, it takes 42 muscles in your face to frown but it only takes 4 mus
It occurred to me that he hadn’t referred to the ‘little ole light’ again, so maybe that meant it was all sorted out. But if it had been sorted out wouldn’t he have told us, so we didn’t have anything to worry about? Maybe he didn’t mention it because it wasn’t sorted out and we did have something to worry about but he didn’t want us to do that so he didn’t mention it? God, I hate flying.
The airport lights swung into view and as we lost altitude I noticed that we were not approaching the same runway as before. So, that’s your plan. You’re keeping us away from aeroplanes full of people and fuel and concourses and hard things we don’t want to go bumping into when our undercarriage collapses and the wings fall off, eh? Very clever. Then we turn into a giant fuel-filled toothpaste tube and worrying will be the last thing on our minds. Stop thinking that way, idiot. Think of something else!
Did you know that a pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes? In my next life I want to be a pig. Some lions mate over 50 times a day. If a pig did that it would need a 25-hour day. I still want to be a pig.
The plane’s engines rose in pitch as the pilot adjusted the approach speed to the runway. I gripped the arm rest with tight, whitened knuckles.
The plane dipped slightly and ran parallel with the runway no more than 50 feet above the tarmac. I stopped trying to distract myself and peered fixedly out of the window. The pilots were bringing the plane in on a very long and shallow glide. So they are worried about the wheels collapsing. Even as the thought occurred to me I saw a fire engine flash past the window travelling at high speed along an adjacent runway, then another and another. I watched the flashing orange lights recede and counted another six emergency vehicles zip past the window. It was clear that somebody was doing a great deal of worrying about something.