Taking Flight

For thousands of years, humans have dreamed of taking to the skies. The ancient Greeks told the legend of Icarus, a boy who flies so high that the sun melts his man-made wings and he crashes down to Earth. Across history, many more people have died after jumping from a tower or cliff with wings that didn’t quite work. Flying, for humans, seemed an impossibility.

Yet many continued to dream of flying. One such dreamer was the great 15th-century artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci. He studied the flight of birds and even designed his own flying machines, but they—and he—never left the ground.

Five hundred years later, standing on a windy hill in North Carolina, in the United States, I was about to make the dream come true.

Unlike Leonardo, I had the help of a hang glider—a light, modern machine that makes flying simple and safe enough even for tourist entertainment. I held on to the hang glider as tightly as I could. Terrified, I ran down the hill, and suddenly, I was running in the air. I was flying! What a thrill! Now I wanted more.

A friend in my hang gliding class suggested I next try a “tandem flight”—flying in a hang glider made for two people. A small airplane carries you up 600 meters and then lets you go. I decided to try it with my instructor, Jon Thompson. Up into the air we went. When the airplane released us, it felt like falling from a building, headfirst. “You can fly now,” my instructor said. After a few moments, I found the courage to turn the glider a little to the left, and then a little to the right. I was more like a pigeon than an eagle, but I was flying!

Of course, hang gliding is not the only way mankind has learned to enjoy the freedom of flight. Today, many people skydive, while BASE jumpers—those who jump off buildings, cliffs, and bridges—often get their thrills illegally. For a few exciting moments, they experience free-falling—falling downwards with nothing to slow them—before they open a parachute. “It’s as close as human beings can get to flying like a bird,” says BASE jumper J. T. Holmes.

Switzerland’s Yves Rossy might disagree. The wings he has invented for personal flight have four small engines. He steers them just by moving his shoulders. For 10 minutes at a time, Rossy seems to fly as free as a bird, having both power and control. One of his longest flights was across the water from France to England. “It’s awesome, it’s great, it’s fantastic!” says Rossy. Since then, he has continued to improve his wing design, and hopes he can “motivate the next generation of thinkers to do something different … even if it seems impossible.”