The thrill of feeling free

Game over

Today’s accompanying tune: “Learning to Fly” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

I watched the young boy stretch out his arms as he cruised down the grassy hill. His face alight at the light breeze combing his hair; his parents watching idly from above. As he reached the bottom and turned back to face them, he said he’d felt like he was flying.

I turned to Andrew.

“Oh boy, he’s done for. Once they learn what it feels like to fly, it’s game over.”

I’m sure I have a similar memory tucked deep inside my brain. I rarely sat still when I was younger — it was all my parents could manage to keep me from climbing the backyard swing set or taking off down the hill, arms similarly spread, at the end of the cul-de-sac. I piled leaves high in the fall and landed softly in their crunchy embrace after launching myself into the air. I sailed down sidewalks and quiet streets on any bicycle I could get my hands on. I leapt out of the swing as it reached its peak time and time again. I rode bareback on horses as they cantered around the ring. I was never one to chase adrenaline, though I can never deny its influence. Mostly, I am risk-averse, and always have been. But to fly, well, that was something else entirely. I could calculate the risk, see the reward. There were no illusions of grandeur or misplaced confidences. Just an impulse to feel that way, again.

I was chasing the intoxicatingly visceral sensation of air whipping around my body, the openness of space propelling me onward, forward. The way it freed my limbs, my mind. The impossibility of lifting from the ground, even for a second, edged out by a whisper of what if. The reminder of what it means to be expressly human, bound to the earth with our non-webbed, non-feathered biped ways. The wonder of what it must look like from above, what it could feel like to soar. What it would be like to be free.

As I got older, I found it on the track. The explosion from the blocks, the spikes in the rubberized ground. The arms pumping, pushing, pulling me forward. The language we use to talk about running indicates that I am not alone. Athletes fly down the track, cruise past the finish line. Legs propel them forward. The transition to hiking was an easy, albeit slower, one. The vastness brought on by moving through space and time amplified by towering granite or cathedrals of old growth. Now, mountains are the ones soaring. But the feeling remains, the expansive smallness of being human in the world. Our biggest desires, our deepest need, found in the simple act of moving our land-bound legs beneath us.

Even on the most grueling hills with the most challenging vertical gain, I think of what it will feel like on the other side. What it will be like to cruise down the ridge, along the hillside, into the wash, along the river. I return often to a moment during my run across the California Riding and Hiking Trail this January where the trail follows a low-angle ridge after an early, sandy climb. As I ran, the ridge reached out below, charting the way down and out towards flatter ground, the trail easily visible in the rocky gray dirt. I turned right, away from the mountains, and headed down the ridge. Nearly 17 miles in, and I soared. At 32 years old, I spread my arms and felt the wind rush beneath them. I felt like I was flying.

I dream of this moment often; as often as I do of being a literal bird, catching the thermals and hovering over the great expanse below. I circle, I watch. I whip around trees and summits and land carefully on rocks. I spin in the gusts and dive at stomach-churning speeds. I hop from branch to branch and I preen. Sometimes, in the dream, I am watching my body cruise along the ridge; other times I on the ridge itself, watching the birds above. They are joining me, I always think. We are flying.

Other times, I dream I’m back in Alaska. I’m seated in the three-person Super Cub, a bush plane with massive wheels meant to land just about anywhere. In the winter, the tires are switched out for wide skis for landing on frozen lakes or landscapes smoothed under a layer of snow. I am tucked behind glass as I heard the engine whir to life; I follow the mechanical clicks of the pilot’s instruments mere feet from my face. I feel the force as the wheels turn fast, faster, faster, then frozen in time as they leave the ground. How the ground looks as we lift away, the feeling of gravity trying to pull my organs back into its domain. I wind throw canyons carved deep by glacial melt, soar over the deep blue glaciers themselves, squint to find wildlife rendered minuscule at such heights. I circle and search for places to land, gliding gently to a stop in places my feet could never have taken me.

I wake and remember all the places they have taken me. The peaks and summits, the dense forests, the glittering bare alpine meadows. The rocky scrambles, the sandy washes, the crystalline lakes. The spongy tundra, the sickly sweet tang of lowland forest undergrowth. Regardless of how many miles I clocked per hour, each time, I felt the thrill I’ve always felt, the thrill I first felt so long ago, the thrill the young boy felt in a city park near the water. The thrill of arms stretched long, the thrill of wide open space. The thrill of feeling like you’re flying. The thrill of feeling free.

It’s a thrill I plan to chase the rest of my life. One that has defined my hobbies, my goals, my day-to-day life. I want nothing more than to feel as though I am flying as much as humanly possible during my time on this earth. I will run, I will cover great distances, I will stand on top of mountains and hills and breathe the oxygen-deprived air with a sense of euphoria. I will take tiny planes to places few other people will ever see. I will do it all, to the best of my abilities, because it is a true love of my life.

And that’s why discovering that feeling is game over. It is unlike any other feeling, any other freedom. Taste it just once, and you’ll never be the same.

Here’s to taking flight.

- Megan