My flight partner, in all his wisdom of twenty-one years, begins attaching ropes to my body with big aluminum clips. The chair is attached to the glider; I will go in front, he in the back. I can still give up, but that's no longer me. I am completely unresponsive.
The twenty-one-year-old veteran and the ringleader trade opinions about the wind as we get into position.
He also fastens himself to the chair. I can feel his breath on the back of my head. I look behind me and I don't like what I see: a row of colored pieces of fabric stretches across the white snowy ground, each with a person tied to it. At the end of the row is my husband, also wearing a bicycle helmet. I guess he had no choice and will jump two or three minutes after me.
"We're ready. Start running."
I don't move.
"Let's go. Start running."
I explain that I don't want to keep twirling around in the sky. Let's go down gently. Five minutes of flight is good for me.
"You can let me know while we're flying. But, please, there's a line. We have to jump now."
As I no longer have free will, I follow orders. I start running toward the void.
"Faster."
I go faster, my boots kicking snow in all directions. Actually, it's not me who is running, but a robot who obeys voice commands. I start to scream--not from fear or excitement, but from instinct. I've gone back to being a cave woman, like the Cuban shaman said. We're afraid of spiders and insects, and we scream in situations like this. We've always screamed.
Suddenly my feet lift off the ground, and I hold on to the belts securing me to the chair with all my might. I stop screaming. The instructor keeps running for a few more seconds and then immediately we're no longer going in a straight line. The wind is controlling our lives.
I don't open my eyes that first minute--I don't want a concept of height, the mountains, the danger. I try to imagine that I'm at home in the kitchen, telling the kids a story about something that happened during our trip; maybe about the town, or maybe about the hotel room. I can't tell them their father drank so much he fell down when we were headed back to the hotel. I can't say I took a risk and went flying, because they'll want to do it, too. Or, worse, they might try to fly alone and throw themselves from the top floor of our house.
Then I realize I'm being stupid; why be here with my eyes closed? No one made me jump. "I've been here for ten years and have never seen a single accident," said the concierge.
I open my eyes.
And what I see, what I feel, is something I will never be able to accurately describe. Down below is the valley linking the two lakes, and the town between them. I'm flying, free in space and silence as we follow the wind, sailing in circles. The mountains surrounding us no longer seem so high or threatening, but friendly, dressed in white, with the sun glistening all around.
My hands relax, I let go of the straps, and I open my arms like a bird. The man behind me must have realized that I'm a different person. Instead of continuing down, he starts to rise, using invisible currents of warm air in what once seemed like a homogeneous atmosphere.
Ahead of us is an eagle, sailing the same ocean and effortlessly using its wings to control its mysterious flight. Where does it want to go? Is it just having fun, enjoying life and the beauty all around it?
It feels like I'm communicating with the eagle by telepathy. The flight instructor follows it, our guide. Show us where we need to go to climb increasingly skyward--to fly forever. I feel the same thing I felt that day in Nyon when I imagined running until my body couldn't run anymore.
And the eagle tells me: "Come. You are heaven and earth, the wind and the clouds, the snow and the lakes."
It seems like I am in my mother's womb, completely safe and protected and experiencing things for the first time. Soon I will be born, and I will turn back into a human being who walks with two feet on the face of the Earth. At the moment, though, all I am doing is existing in this womb, putting up no resistance and letting myself go wherever I'm taken.
I'm free.
Yes, I'm free. And the eagle is right: I am the mountains and the lakes. I have no past, present, or future. I am getting to know what people call "Eternity."
For a split second I wonder: Does everyone who jumps have this same feeling? But what does that matter? I don't want to think about others. I'm floating in Eternity. Nature speaks to me as if I were its beloved daughter. The mountain tells me: "You have my strength." The lakes tell me: "You have my peace and my calm." The sun tells me: "Shine like me, go beyond yourself. Listen."
I start to hear the voices that have been stifled inside for so long, stifled by haunting thoughts, by loneliness, by night terrors, the fear of change, and the fear that everything will stay the same. The higher we go, the further I distance myself from me.
I'm in another world where things fall perfectly into place. Far from that life full of chores to do, impossible desires, suffering, and pleasure. I have nothing and I am everything.
The eagle begins to turn toward the valley. With open arms I mimic the movement of its wings. If anyone could see me right now, they wouldn't know who I am, because I am light, space, and time. I'm in another world.
And the eagle tells me: "This is Eternity."
In Eternity, we don't exist; we are just an instrument of the Hand that created the mountains, the snow, the lakes, and the sun. I go back in time and space to the moment when everything is created and the stars walk backward. I want to serve this Hand.
Several ideas appear and disappear without changing the way I feel. My mind has left my body and blended with nature. Oh, what a pity the eagle and I must land at the park across from the hotel down below. But what does it matter what will happen in the future? I am here, in this womb made of nothing and everything.