High Flight

                                          Colombian Flag at center.

High Flight

      by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air. Up, up the long delirious, burning blue, I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle flew - And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod The high untresspassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Pilot Officer Gillespie Magee No 412 squadron, RCAF Killed 11 December 1941

Thanks to Susannah N. for first sharing this poem with me, 9 years ago.

Bucaramanga, Colombia

Colombia- third most populous country in Latin America after Brazil and Mexico.  But the world is smaller than we can imagine, bigger than we can see.  

At Bogata International I am retrieved by Vicente,  the family driver for la Familia Garcia-Sossa, a relative of whom I met in Alaska.  

For two days I am shuffled around the chaos of the city (in a Jeep with 1/2 thick glass and armored doors, a common feature of many automobiles of those who can afford it here) to do various errands and see the sights. I'm treated like family back at their apartment.  

I don't know quite how to put in to words the sense of... perhaps Cosmopolitan-ness? is the word I'm looking for- that this family possesses.  They are more travelled than I will ever be and have a sense of welcoming worldliness that I can only hope to achieve some day.

Carolina (Car-oh-leen-ah) has been to Alaska to visit her Aunt Patricia several times.  She has yet to see the Northern lights herself, but has brought them to life with a paint brush (above).

It's a ten hour bus ride from Bogata to Bucarmanga.  Average speed is about 60 km/h, lots of rain and bad French action movies blaring uninvited from the screens overhead.  A girl of about six is in the seat ahead and is traveling solo, I just heard her on the cell phone with her mother a minute ago though.  Her doodles in the window fog eventually overtake my window too, so I draw her a smiley face.  She giggles and draws the same, then follows my lead as we first do a stick body, then hair and facial features.  I draw diagonal eybrows over my smiley face, she draws tears streaming down from hers.  

"Por que las lagrimas?" (Why the tears?) I ask.

"Por que él esta enojado," (Because he's upset) she explains.  

I've always said that I've learned more Spanish from kids than grown-ups, or Spanish classes for that matter.

For a few weeks I am planning to stay here http://colombiaparagliding.com/ and do as much flying as possible.  It really is an amazing set-up here if you are a paraglider pilot: a cheap hostel outside the city  just a few steps from the best lunch site in the country, Volador de los Aguilas.  

It happens that I've arrived at the beginning of the Colombian National Cup and the site is restricted for most of the day to competing pilots.  So until it's over in a few days I'm able to fly only in the mornings and evenings, but it has been good to see what talented pilots can do with this amazing ridge soaring/thermal site.

Sam (above, just landed) is a pilot visiting from Whistler, Canada.  He's a classic ski bum character and professional ski racer, but he says he especially enjoys flying because it's a different community of people than the sports he normally is involved in.  I'll just say that his actual words were more brash than that...

In this photo (above) Pablo, a Colombian Pilot (who is deaf) is explaining to Sam (who doesn't speak Spanish) how he too overcame and learned to fly.  By use of a specialized hat/helmet with which the student could see lighted arrows and dots that the intructor controlled with a radio hand set, he was able to learn.

All is well here and I am spoiled.  Take good care out there, readers.

Santa Barbara, CA

"Young man, there's a new drug out there," -the old man's eyebrows nearly brushing mine to get his point across- "it's called Euphoria, and I know you're holding!"  Just moments ago it had begun to dawn on me that I may have walked in to the middle of a Transaction between the old man breathing in my face, Gilbert, and Joey, a younger Latino guy.  Chatty and curious about Alaska, they had grown quiet when I introduced myself and asked their names.  Their conversation made it clear they were recent acquaintances.  I couldn't help but wonder what kind of designer psychotropic Euphoria might be.  

The Mesa Park locals drew me in by virtue of my conspicuous backpack ("That's a large backpack, young man!" Gil had shouted) and I listened passenger-like through his tales as a gold miner deep in the Talkeetna mountains in the 60's, the revelation that HAARP is in fact a massive atmospheric-ionization device used to control the weather (China and Russia have similar installations but since the end of the Cold War a weather-war truce has been called), and that Sarah Palin signals the arrival of a coming spiritual insurrection.

"Euphoria?" I asked.  "Is that like Ecstasy, with the smiley faces and stuff?  Sounds like I'll stay away from that."  Gil slaps his his forehead.  I turn down the offer of a cigarette from Joey ("My real name is José, though," he says).  Maybe a shot of Jack?  We're seated at a sunny picnic table with moms pushing strollers and well groomed joggers bouncing past, it's about 75 with a sea breeze wafting up from the nearby shore bluff.  In the past at this same park I have met a former Navy test pilot who was the last person to see John Denver alive, the accordion player for Muddy Waters' band back in the day (?), and a depressed and broken former real-estate mogul.  I've been told talking to people like this is dangerous but like a sucker I always take the bait for a story.

Before we part, Gil shares some wisdom which I'll attempt to paraphrase.  "Listen- you possess a supersensibility in the alchemetical sense of being," he explains.  "Alchemy- the ancient art of self-transformation... Supersensibility- it is not divorced from the actuality of truth!  It began with the loss of the Grail, listen- it's loss is the denial of everything you know to be the Antichrist..."  As he departs to his '87 Jayco I'm left with the echo of, "May your journey be greater than your destination!" several times over.

                                           Zak at work at Santa Barbara Forge and Iron

My host here in Santa Barbara, Zak -a fellow Alaska transplant- summed it up well: "We have a lot of crazy people here, and a lot of artistic people too."  One afternoon here I awoke from a nap on an empty beach to a silhouette of a woman practicing an intricate ballet routine.  For nearly and hour I watched as the figure sashayed and leapt and spun and eventually dove in to the waves.  Never have I so easily fallen in love with a shadow.

Santa Barbara is a place I could stay longer, but for now it is a stop en route to South America.  I learned to fly paragliders here this spring, living out of the back of my truck, and am hoping to do some flying here during my weeklong layover.  So far the weather has been uncooperative, uncharacteristic for this mecca of sport aviation.

I owe a great boon to friend Kris, a veritable radiator of worldliness and empathy, who plucked me from LAX late at night, shuttled me here up the coast the next day, and treated me to fish & chips.  I did have have to endure the mild awkwardness of visiting a Patagonia retail store and be introduced as, "... my friend Ben, he's paragliding the Condor Trail all the way down the Andes from Colombia down to Tierra del Fuego.  Do you know anyone who's in touch with Doug Tompkins [founder of the North Face and recent Patagonian land-deprivatization baron] to find out about volunteering on his ranch down there?"  Advertising my plans in a high-end gear shop is so far out of my normal groove I can't help but squirm a little as a the girl at the front desk gives us their corporate phone number to try, but Kris is a tireless networker and it's only natural he'd want to connect me with movers and shakers wherever I'm bound.  Talking further with the girl at the front desk, it turns out he used to race sailboats with her father back in the day.  I find myself not surprised at the small-world connection.

Where I am bound for is Colombia, where I'll spend several weeks of flying (hopefully) near Bucaramanga.  I have been promised a pick-up from the airport in Bogata by -brace for small-world connection- the sister of a co-worker of my Aunt in Anchorage.  Any extra space in my luggage is filled with knitting yarn that I am to deliver.  Yarn, because it like many consumer goods from toys to electronics to cookware is more expensive in Colombia.  It is cheaper to have a relative (or in this case me) fill duffel bags with stuff from the USA and schlepp it there.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to smuggle legal goods from the USA in to Colombia.

I'd like to address my well-intentioned friends and relatives who have suggested in passing that my traveling might something to occupy me "while I figure out what I want to do."  To be clear this- traveling and learning to fly- is what I want to do.  There is no lost-soul searching intended here.  There is no delayed gratification.  As to what I want to be when I grow up, that's top-secret of course.

Now, at the beginning I'm feeling loaded and fresh for travel.  How will it be six weeks from now?  I hope to share more soon.