I went skydiving somewhere at a beach with a bunch of other people I don’t know. Instead of parachutes, we had picnic blankets. I had to save someone whose blanket wouldn’t open properly and we landed in the water.
I'll teach you to jump on the wind's back and then away we go.
- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
‘Those who don't jump will never fly’ is a dictum drilled into me from an early age. It’s one I took literally when I learned when parachuting and then later dabbled in sky diving, well before I went into the British army as a combat pilot.
Skydiving provides a unique combination of adrenalin-fuelled exhilaration and perfectly calm tranquillity. While in free fall it's all about the rush - but once the parachute opens and your heart rate steadies, you'll take a moment to gaze around you and see the whole world in a new light. It's beautiful up there, and the experience is about as close to actual flying as humans can actually get.
To the skydiver, ‘flying’ in a plane is akin to ‘swimming’ in a boat. As someone who has flown helicopters I would quible with that simple characterisation but eventually I’m okay to acknowledge there is some truth behind it.
As someone who used to parachute and sky dive as a recreational past time, I can empathise with those skydivers who live for the wind whipping past as they plummet toward the earth during free fall, and the thrill of floating on the air currents once their 'chutes are safely open. They live on the edge, though not in danger - amid the elements, but not at their mercy.
In skydiving, it is the fear response that gradually weakens. During the precipitous descent, the amply tested parachutist can savour the thrill rather than endure the panic. You may never get rid of the butterflies, but you can teach them how to fly in formation.
The earliest drawing of a parachute-like concept comes from Italy in the 1470s. Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola sketched the conical device you see below. It wouldn't have worked — the parachute is too small, the wood would be too heavy — but the idea is there:
About a decade later, Leonardo da Vinci sketched a similar idea — a pointy cloth parachute held open by a wooden frame. Though da Vinci’s design was never actually used in the Renaissance, it apparently works; a British skydiver named Adrian Nicholas tried it out in 2000.
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I was skydiving but my parachute never opened. I managed to survive the fall, but my nose, my left ear, and my jaw fell off, so I had to pick them up and put them back on. I was fine after that, but I couldn’t open my left eye.