The wind lifted the hang glider off my shoulders as I sprinted down the hill. I leaned into my harness, pulled back on the control tubes, and for a few seconds, I left the earth. I was flying.

Then a cross breeze caught my canvass wings, and I nose-dived into the grass. As I untangled myself from the harness, a pair of finches flitted across the sky, taunting me with titters and high-pitched peeps.

I had enrolled in a weekend hang gliding school at Lookout Mountain Flight Park because I wanted to fly with the birds. I wanted to pilot a pair of glider wings and find out how high I could go. So far, the answer was about 15 feet.

But the real altitude would come later that evening on my first tandem flight. I would be gliding 4,000 feet above the Appalachian plateau, harnessed to an experienced instructor who would guide me down to the landing zone.

An hour before dusk, I arrived at the Lookout Mountain Flight Park outside Chattanooga and met my tandem instructor, Mike Labado. Mike was an electrical engineer who quit his 9-to-5 job so he could hang glide full time. Over the past 16 years, the gray-bearded gliding pilot has logged over 6,000 tandem flights.

Mike walked me over to a yellow-rimmed glider and handed me a helmet. I wormed my way into a cocoon-like harness, then clipped myself to Mike’s caribiners. We hung six inches off the ground, suspended from the glider’s frame.

“Ready. Clear.” Mike gave a thumbs-up to the tow plane, which dragged us down a bumpy meadow runway and into the air. It happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to get scared.

On the tow-ride up, we bounced through choppy currents of wind flowing over the mountains. Like river rocks, the Appalachian peaks were creating turbulent pockets of air downwind. Our glider tottered in the rowdy air, but Mike steadied it with light, two-finger touches on the base tube.

When the altimeter read 4,000 feet, Mike detached the tow rope. The glider jerked down suddenly, and my stomach dropped with it. I lurched against the control frame, holding tight to Mike’s harness straps.
Then everything was completely quiet and still. We floated on our own now, sailing silently toward the setting sun. I unclenched my grip and settled in.

Splotchy shadows of cloud spread across the valley below. Ribbons of river flowed between fingers of flat-topped mountains. There was so much green everywhere. My nose dripped, my eyes watered, and my heart hammered against the harness.

“It doesn’t suck,” Mike said, smiling. He scooted my hands to the center of the base tube and asked me to take over. I white-knuckled the aluminum bar and tried to muscle the glider to the right, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Pretend you are a clanger in a bell,” he suggested. Instead of stiff-arming the turn, I simply shifted my hips, and the glider veered right. I clanged my body the other direction, and the glider banked left toward Lookout Mountain.

We soared over the mountain, where a flock of brightly-colored gliders fluttered above the ridge. A few daredevil pilots were pulling wing-overs, loops, and ramp dives. Mike swooped down to buzz the flight park tower, delighting the onlookers gathered along the ridge top.

But the most spectacular thing I saw during my flight wasn’t hang gliding aerobatics. Nor was it the checkerboard landscape or the crimson-crowned skies at sunset. It was a red-tailed hawk right below us. I could see his rust-red tail feathers, hooked beak, even the blink of his beady brown eyes as he circled above the trees. I heard the sound of his wings cut through the air. He was so real. We followed him for awhile, then watched him fold his wings and fall toward earth.

It didn’t feel like our glider was losing altitude, but we had dropped nearly 2,000 feet in 10 minutes. As we descended, the ground looked less like a still shot and more like a motion picture. Cattle in the fields and cars on the highway came into view. We saw our glider’s reflection in a glassy lake. Then Mike tucked us into a series of tight spins, and like water down a drain, we spiraled toward the landing zone.
Unlike solo gliders, tandem gliders land on wheels. We touched down and rolled gently toward the hangar while Mike’s dog chased us down the runway, nipping at the glider’s tires.

On the ground, I felt buzzed and light-headed, like I was coming out of a dream. I hugged Mike (and Mike’s dog), then walked dizzily toward the landing zone bunkhouse, where glider groupies were hanging out for the evening.

From the bunkhouse porch, I watched solo glider pilots aim for an orange cone in the middle of the grass runway. They flared their gliders, landed on their feet, and — like dismounting gymnasts — tried not to take an extra step. I watched the last spokes of sunlight tinting the clouds’ pink underbelly. I watched twilight shadows flicker across the meadow. And for a long time, I listened to the birds gurgle and whistle in the trees.

I knew what they were singing about.

(Will Harlan writes about his experiences outdoors. He can be reached at wharlan@hotmail.com)

 

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