“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake”. – Thoreau

There are dreams and actions that have been bred into the human psyche since the dawn of our time. Sitting close to a fire through the night and the safety that allows, scanning a star filled sky to find the way, these are things that if done, even today, feel like we’re supposed to be doing them. It’s as though we can feel those before us as the experience in essence has been passed down through the ages of humanity.

As long as humans have sat by fires, I believe that they have also sat on the sides of mountains and in the cool grass of the prairies, looking up at the clouds drifting by and watching and the circling falcons and hawks under those clouds. For as long as our kind has experienced life “on the ground”, we have also dreamed of what it would be like to have the seemingly limitless freedom of those birds. Unlike the history we have with navigation by the stars and the security of fire, it’s only been within the last 30 years that the dream of bird like flight has been realized.

The powerless, foot launched, prone flight that hang gliding allows is as close to “being a bird” as I could imagine. It feels like living a dream while hang gliding. It’s a surreal and sensory filled experience that is so “in the now” that often, my memory remembers only bits and pieces, emotional response and fleeting highlights that have me wondering if what I remember even actually happened. This is the essence of hang gliding. Actively living a dream……my dream, and I will never forget how lucky I am to be alive in this time and to participate in what I was born to wish for.