Branded Blog

Have you felt like jumping off a mountain recently?  It seems to be taking off.

Bad puns aside, I was catching up with an old school friend of mine recently, and it seems he’s taken to jumping off mountains (or high things at least, not sure how many mountains live in Umhlanga) in order to bring some of that elusive (and I think mostly illusory) balance-thing back to his life.

He’s doing it with a para-glider attached, you’ll be glad to hear. I certainly was. And it does seem to have brought some daylight and breathing space to his life, which is all about the nightlights and party people, being in the clubbing business. Some nice poetic symmetry there, at least.

It was an interesting conversation (I use that word advisedly, it was an Instant Message conversation, but sometimes those are actually more instructive and connecting than voiced ones!) in many ways, not least because he was trying to convince me to join in on our 20^th school reunion in November – all of which must be a mistake (maybe Maths is not the same in the Vrystaat) since we can’t possibly have left school that long ago. I remain in denial.

But it did strike me as interesting that 20 years, and an almost impossibly different set of experiences later, we should both have come to para-gliding of late. We were friends back then, but have only really kept in touch patchily so the chances were slim to none really. But there it is – a myriad differences eventually must co-incide somewhere.  He’s almost qualified as a pilot (that’s what they call the people who have the cahunas to jump off mountains solo with wings attached these days – they used to call them daft. Or Icarus. Or visionaries.), and I have only ever done one tandem jump with a good friend of my barefoot man’s, so it’s a glancing co-incidence, but I think it still qualifies.

It’s an awesome thing to do! Whether the take-off is smooth and just feels like running on air (like mine did – I was still running as instructed when I noticed the trees were beneath my feet) or slightly more entangled first time round like the bare-foot man’s jump, everyone ends up in the air searching for the beep. The little altimeter with it’s encouraging height-seeking beep is the only thing you hear up there, above the tree-line as you search for the invisible rising air-streams that will raise you above Lion’s Head (if you happen to have jumped from it, as we did – probably less likely if you’re taking off in Natal…) in a series of sweeping curves that would probably look like the path up a steep mountain if you left a trail as you flew. It was chilly up in the air, but quiet. Wonderfully quiet, not even the wind really seems to make a noise. And I found it really hard to notice the speed and distance we were doing. At one stage the expectant-dad Israeli pilot-friend told me we were doing probably 40km an hour as we headed across the gap from Lion’s Head to Table Mountain, and it hardly felt like we were moving! I wondered if birds have a sense of how fast they look to us from the ground when they swoop and glide around up there.

There was also the wonderful sense of being able to actually see how everything fits together for a few minutes – I could see the Cape Flats out beyond the Southern Suburbs and how the coastline curves out around Robben Island towards Blouberg. I could see Devils Peak and how it hems the city bowl together. I could see our flat nestled near the reservoirs against the front face of  the mountain, and I could see – all in a glance – how the other side of the mountain extends into the Twelve Apostles rising above Camps Bay and surrounds. It’s stuff I know – mostly – and after 3 years I feel pretty ok about where most areas are in Cape Town, but I could see it all at once without the noise of an engine; without the restriction of a tiny aeroplane window, without the intercession of a camera lense and print. It was all laid out easily, effortlessly below me and it all made sense of the maps and GPS co-ords and directions and all those things that generally make me feel hopelessly lost. I was, for a little while, totally found. I knew where I was, I could see it all in perspective, and it was breathtaking.

And I wonder if that is what we really look for in things like school reunions and chats with old friends, and maybe even business reviews and strategy sessions – some perspective on where we’ve been and how it all fits in with where we find ourselves now. It’s like we need, every now and then, to get some height above the streets we live in and see how the pathways fit together and how they got us here, to the places we are now.

It’s amazing how much it helps, sometimes.

And although I won’t be attending that reunion in November, I’m glad to know about it (and I’m sure I’ll hear some of the entertaining stories from the pilot-friend!). Just knowing is enough to remind me about the places I will be from eventually – the ones that have gotten me here to this amazing life I love living despite all the daily grind stuff that happens and fades.

It’s the big views that count in the end – and I will raise a glass to that class and the people in that mining town in the middle of the country that got me started on the road to here – it’s been a great road, hope all of yours have been so too.

With love & to those of our number – Cara, Monique, and others I’m sure – who ran out of time too soon. You will always be part of the story, as we all are.