Into the Mystic

When Van Morrison's lyrics foretell an unexpected experience

Labor Day Weekend Greetings Friends! As we see off summer, I share with you the story of a spontaneous paragliding adventure at the end of an Alaska road trip. In addition, I’m very happy to offer the option to listen to an audio recording of this story. Happy reading or listening! -Katie B.

Listen to this Story

Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, we're afraid!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
"We can't, We will fall!" they responded.
"Come to the edge," he said.
And so they came.
And he pushed them.
And they flew.”

-Guillaume Apollinaire

    

Three men jog along the edge of an emerald bowl swathed in wild flora. They wear harnesses attached to personal parachutes called paragliders. As dense fog moves in and then out again, they launch and hover, catching enough air to suspend on an updraft for a few minutes, then pull back to the ledge.  In between launches they stand, paragliders drooping from shoulders, like superheroes on a break.

   My husband, Karl and I are in Hatcher Pass, land of steep alpine ridges and gentle slopes, a backcountry playground for skiers and hikers. We chat up the intriguing trio. “It’s too foggy to fly” offers an elfin young man with dark curly hair and wire rimmed glasses. “We’re practicing our launch technique,” he explains. Of the three, he seems the most intent. We exchange introductions. “My name is Ariel.” 

     It is the last day of our 35^th anniversary Alaska road trip. Tomorrow we’ll return home to Juneau. The 49^th state is where we’ve spent most of our marriage. Thirty years ago we moved from California with our two young children to the southeast panhandle of Alaska bordering British Columbia.

     The short roads out of Juneau end in roadless wilderness. And after a generation of landlocked living, Karl and I realized we hadn’t seen most of Alaska, north of us. The Alaska we could take in as tourists on a real highway. Now, after two weeks of stunning vistas, gigantic midnight sun grown veggies, the Eskimo Olympics and a pod of sealions capturing migrating salmon, I’m most mesmerized by humans trying to fly.

     This must be related to my long festering fascination with the apparent fearlessness of my grown kids and their friends to send their bodies, feet attached to skis or pedaling mountain bikes, down steep slopes and off promontories.  I love skiing and biking too, but my trepidation hinders my ability. The potential crash landing of the flight looks too painful.

    Fast forward 24 hours.

     Tamped down nervous energy pulsates through my body as I step into the onesie harness. Ariel snaps my straps closed and connects carabiners to chute strings. I slip into audible breathing to calm myself, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

     For years I’d watched paragliders launch themselves off a vertical ridge on a fjord overlooking the saltwater channel out our front window, 700 miles south. We spend much of the winter on the local ski hill, where we’ll witness the occasional flight of a skier with a billowing paraglider attached to their back.

     I envy these daring friends and neighbors, human birds, floating and bobbing over snow white slopes or jade water. Paragliding looks so…freeing. But also appears so potentially… deadly. I just can’t imagine taking up this sport. I don’t have the faith in myself to steer with the wind, let alone land.  One friend broke her ankles and another, his back after a hard landing on unforgiving dirt.

     Releasing myself from the binds of gravity was not on my radar screen at the start of our road trip. But somehow, the longer I gaze down this gentle green bowl, the more possible seems flying over it. Covered with snow it would be skiable, the pitch gradual and undulating. If I could ski it, could I get the guts to float over this abyss?

     Turns out Ariel has a freelance tandem paragliding business.

     This is what I love about travel, the unexpected, unplanned once in a lifetime opportunity that just shows up. You can either let it go to perennial regret or go for it. 

     Rewind 48 hours.

     Karl and I are huddled along the makeshift counter in our rented camper van. I’m sitting on the cooler and Karl on the edge of the bed that takes up the back of the van. The jet boil rumbles for instant coffee and tea as we spread cream cheese with chives on bagels topped with smoked salmon. It’s day thirteen of our two-week heart of Alaska tour.  Nashville standout Jason Isbell croons a cover of the Van Morrison classic Into the Mystic from a small Bluetooth speaker.

We were born before the wind,

Also, younger than the sun….

The lyrics wafting through the van speak to the dense white mist shrouding the mountain ridge above our campsite, just south of the National Park named for the highest mountain on the continent, Denali, also engulfed in fog and unseeable.

'Ere the bonnie boat was won
As we sailed into the mystic

     Over the past fortnight, we did not expect the variety of colors the mountains could appear, depending on the light. We drove through places reminiscent of Montana, like the tan peaks against a bright blue sky in the Matanuska Valley, and the teal and rust hued peaks off the Richardson highway, illuminated by the midnight sun. In Denali National Park is a pull-out called Polychrome, for the rainbow of hues reflecting on an endless series of mountain ranges. Enroute to Valdez, the towering coastal alpine peaks unfolding through Thompson Pass were like our Southeast Alaskan home on steroids. As the elevation leveled out, we caught sight of cars parked on the side of the road and necks craning. We pulled over and looked up to waterfalls streaming down smooth slate between lush green foliage, remnants of glaciers past.

    In Southcentral Alaska, the Little Susitna River wended clear and brisk in a verdant labyrinth, like the Scottish Highlands. We turned onto a gravel road overlooking Summit Lake, the color of a turquoise pendant. There we spied people along the shore, trying their luck at catching stocked trout. Up and to the right, the three paragliders.

     “That’s my van,” offered Ariel, “parked next to yours.” He nodded in the direction of the small pull-out area behind us. Then told us about an overnight parking lot for vans and RVs just down the road. “I’ll probably see you there later.”

     The following morning, there was his tall white Ford van a few parking spaces from ours.  Into the Mystic played unbidden for a second day in a row.

    At this point we’d become travel van fans, flirting with the possibility of buying our own. After breakfast we knocked on Ariel’s door and spotted him through the passenger window, perched in a captain’s chair swiveled backwards, the glow of a laptop lighting up his college boy face. A few seconds later he looked up and swung open the heavy door. We stood there, a-gasp at the cedar cabinetry, fridge on a dolly and mini-gas stove. “The previous owner was a finish carpenter, did this all himself,” he tells us. “I’ve been here most of the summer. When I’m not working, I’m flying.”

    Ariel spotted his very first paragliders in the sky over Eagle River, a suburb of Anchorage where he grew up.  He became enamored of the sport at university in Washington state, watching paragliders launch from a nearby promontory. At twenty-five he went to paraglide school and “got my tandem license.” Ariel almost quit his job to paraglide fulltime. Then he figured out a way to craft his life around riding wind drafts, working remote as an IT consultant in his van and soaring with the eagles on lunch breaks.  Before the pandemic he says, “I was like, the weird person not coming into the office. Now everyone is.”

     As Karl nerds out on the bells and whistles of Ariel’s van, my mind fixates on the word “tandem.” I tune out their conversation and begin envisioning myself flying. Could I do it? Be a paragliding passenger?   Could Ariel take me flying over the verdant bowl by the lake?

     On visits to family in San Diego, I’d watched paragliding pilots launch above a stretch of beach, their novice cargo in front. I considered trying it for years, wrestling with my inner fear factor. What if a random gust of wind came up and slammed us into the cliffs? 

     My gut tells me this is a one-time chance. After all, his name sounds like aerial-spirit of air in Roman mythology. I decide this is a good omen.

   I broach the subject. Ariel agrees to take me on a flight for a reasonable fee. I sign a waiver. He scrawls my name on what looks like a business card and hands it to me. “Here’s your temporary pilot’s license.” It essentially deems me a student affiliate member of a national paragliding association. I still feel like a kid receiving a plastic sheriff’s badge.

   “Meet me where we met yesterday,” he says.

     Within an hour we’re back by Summit Lake, still socked in.  By now I have Ariel’s number in my cell phone and send him a text. “No visibility due to fog,” he replies.

    Whew. So much for that idea. What was I thinking anyway?

    Within minutes Ariel pulls up to the overlook in his van. Within a few more minutes the fog dissipates. Then creeps back in again, like Van Morrison’s lyrics in my head.

Yeah, when that fog horn blows
I will be coming home
Yeah, when that fog horn blows
I wanna hear it
I don't have to fear it

     “It’s up to you,” says Ariel, pulling out two harnesses from the massive “parapack” he hauled up from the van. “Would you go in this pea soup one minute, clearing the next?” I ask. He points to a rocky outcropping to the left. “We call that the diving board. When that’s visible it’s go time.”

     The diving board reveals itself as the mist clears. Time to dive in. I peer over our launch point, note a ground cover of berries and bushes. The surface looks softer than the parking lot where paragliders land in Juneau. Near the bottom of the bowl is a road with a long hairpin turn through the pass. Ariel points across the road to a pull out. “Can you pick us up there?” he asks Karl.

     My husband clearly has no interest in doing this himself. But he is okay with me doing it.  And I trust the judgement of my safety-aware mountain man, who for decades has been on the ski patrol and a member of our local mountain rescue group. At the same time, it’s not lost on me that I’m making the decision to do something that some might see as irresponsible and reckless. At the end of our anniversary road trip. Without my husband.

    “When I say go,” instructs Ariel, “you start running towards the edge.”  He demonstrates a slow jog and how to keep my feet in running mode, even at the initial rise off the earth. As flying lessons go, this must be the most straightforward.  I feel tense, but not too tense. Karl steadies the i-phone, ready to document.

     We’re standing there, hooked up to the paraglider, me in front, Ariel in back. It is important that we flex our knees into what I tell my ladies’ ski school students is an athletic stance.  A breeze blows up and Ariel struggles to get the chute straight. “It’s up to you,” he reminds me.

     I’m all in.

     I steady my breath, and jog for what feels like a few seconds towards the edge. Soon I am literally running on air.  We float through the quiet, a slight breeze on my cheeks. Into the Mystic.

We approach the diving board, jutting from the green bowl. Ariel’s hands are resting on levers on either side of the chute. He gently pulls on the right one, as we turn away from the cliff. Now we’re soaring over the middle of the bowl. I spot Karl on the bluff,  iphone in hand. My lungs fill with air as the chute fills with wind.  I let out a long “wooooooo!!”

    Ariel gently places his hands on top of mine. “You can steer us for a while.” He shows me how to smoothly pull on the right and left levers to switch directions. He lifts his hands. Now I am driving. Pull right and gradually swish in that direction. And vice versa. For a moment or two I’m a human bird, suspended in time.

    The green bowl wooshes under our dangling feet as we start a gentle descent. The ground gets closer and closer. I bend my knees, tighten my core, my feet hit the earth, the surface reminiscent of the heather I hiked through when I was closer to Ariel’s age, in Ireland. I touch the feathery green. It is indeed, soft.

Thanks so much for your interest and subscribing to my newsletter. Your feedback in the comments section are more than welcome. And if you liked it, please help grow our readership and listenership by clicking on the heart and/or sharing with friends and family. -Katie B.