Read Online The Beckoning Silence by Joe Simpson - Free Book Online Page B

Richard, often in tandem with Tat and Les Wright, a fellow Sheffield-based pilot, had been extolling the wonders of paragliding for the last few years and encouraging me to give it another go. Often, as they sat drinking beer after a good flying day, they would chatter away excitedly, demonstrating with flailing hands and arms whatever heart-stopping manoeuvres they had experienced, laughing at moments that had, in truth, been terrifying. They had that same manic edge about them with ‘heads full of magic’ that great days on the hill gave to climbers. I could see in their intense and passionate enthusiasm exactly the same reactions that I had seen in the company of climbers and it fascinated me.
    Clearly there was something enlivening about this sport they loved, something vital that touched them deeply. As a sport it was difficult to learn, obviously dangerous, had no practical purpose and was potentially very expensive. It wasn’t developed as an offshoot of some military or commercial function. It had no point other than being a source of fun. To be a good pilot one needs to be a fanatic, a completely obsessed control freak, and be prepared to put in a great deal of physical, mental and financial effort. The rewards are intangible and transient. Many hours could be spent sitting on a hillside waiting for the right wind conditions. Excitement levels were intense and draining. Situations could change with alarming speed. A gentle wafting flight on smooth air could rapidly become a frightening battle with vicious turbulent thermals hurling you around the sky. The adrenalin rush of a two-hour cross-country flight requiring intense concentration and intelligent, high-speed decision-making could leave the pilot drenched in sweat and physically exhausted even though the muscular input was relatively low. It was a scary, exciting, beautiful and downright idiotic thing to do. It made them live. I was very tempted.
    There is something primeval in man’s urge to fly. Anyone who has stood on a hillside and watched a hawk rise silently aloft, borne up effortlessly without a beat of its wings, cannot fail to admire the graceful freedom of flight. Who wouldn’t want to join the hawk and swing in lazy circles rising above the world, riding the wind? There was something magical about the ability to harness the power of the sun, to step off this earth into a fluid and powerful medium, play games in the sky, to walk on the wind and read the clouds like a road map. If you watch the movements of smoke from a chimney, spot insects and grass rising on invisible currents of thermic air and see birds wheeling in circles above them, it is like colouring the air. If you are a good pilot you can read these invisible signs and then gently step off the world.
    The forces involved are immense. Understanding them and applying your skills as a pilot to the dynamics of this slippery, restless force is far from easy. Flying had changed enormously since I had quit nine years earlier and I felt anxious that it had left me far behind. I half suspected that I knew how to fly myself into trouble but I didn’t know enough to fly out of it.
    There seemed to be so many things to learn that we had never bothered with before. Indeed it was worrying how ignorant we had been in the early days, flying blindly in dangerously strong winds, blithely unaware of quite what could happen at any moment.
    I remembered standing on a col at the top of the north face of the Aiguille du Midi high above the Chamonix valley one winter’s day with my canopy laid out in the snow, wondering whether I had the nerve to run off the edge. There was a cold wind blowing into my face from the depths of the 3000-foot drop, but that was not why I was shivering. When I ran forward, arms outstretched above me with the front risers against my palms, the wing came up smoothly as the steep snow slope dropped away beneath my feet and suddenly I was off into space and swooping out into frosty