When I Fell From the Sky
When I fell from the sky, it was one of the most unique experiences of my life. The wind was rushing so hard and fast at my face that I couldn’t close my mouth against it. So all the videos and pictures feature a wide open grin, a scream without sound.
That’s right, folks. I went skydiving. Last weekend, four of us drove up to Connecticut in a last-minute decision to jump from a perfectly good airplane. This was something that my sister Katie and I had been talking about doing for years, and suddenly the opportunity presented itself.
My dad was probably the most nervous out of all of us, and he wasn’t even jumping. He was our driver for the day and our moral support, though he didn’t offer too much and instead kept calling us “morons” for falling 14,000ft on purpose. Even now, after taking the leap, I see his point.
To be honest, I wasn’t too nervous going into the day. I felt mostly excitement at the prospect of checking something off my bucket list. The only time I got a little nervous was when we finally started going up in the plane and I saw the rest of the world getting so small all around me. We were packed into the plane really tight and facing backward, so my views were the back of the head of the man in front of me and the world falling away beneath us. I rested my hand on the frame of the little plane for physical and mental support.
It was loud up there, because the door that ultimately exposed us to the jump was made of plexiglass, so all the sounds of the sky were coming in at us as we ascended. As I sat there on the bench in the plane, getting higher and higher, I felt my tandem guide strapping me to him, felt him pulling on my harness and clipping me in at four places to his own harness. I couldn’t see him doing all of this, but I had to trust him, because my life was in his hands.
My mom and I were in the first load, and Katie and her friend were in the second load. (Load is what they call each planefull of jumpers.) It was decided in the air that I would jump before my mom, so she had the terrifying pleasure of watching me fall out and disappear. My guide shuffled our butts out to the edge of the plane, once the door was open, rocked back and forth a couple of times, and finally used that momentum to send us out into the sky, where at first we flipped head over heels into our free fall.
The free fall was like nothing I had ever felt in my life. The wind was so powerful it felt as though I was being pushed up into the sky instead of falling down through it. There was no rollercoaster feeling in the stomach, because as the professionals explained, when you fall out you’re not picking up speed; you’re simply changing directions at the same speed. My mouth immediately dried out and my eyes teared up from the wind.
The free fall lasted about a minute in total. During that time, the videographer who jumped with us found me and my guide and recorded us as we fell. That footage was so fun to watch afterward.
Then suddenly, you’re yanked up as the guide deploys the parachute. That was the moment I was most scared for, having heard stories about parachutes that don’t open when they’re supposed to. But all went well. My guide loosened the harness a bit after that, and we floated above the world. He pointed out Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and several nearby cities.
The day was the most perfect we could have picked to jump out of an airplane. The sky was cloudless and blue, and we had the most amazing view of all the fall foliage down below.
My guide let me steer the parachute for a moment, which was fun, but I was more content letting him take the reins, as from that high up, I had no way of determining where I was supposed to land.
But land I did. The ground finally started to appear as though it was coming up at us, and suddenly I was lifting my legs up for the landing in a grassy field. And then there were my dad and Katie, wanting me to describe what had just happened to me, what I’d just done, and happy I was alive to tell about it.
Would I do it again? Absolutely. Would I recommend it? Not if you’re afraid of heights!
We waited until after we were all safely on the ground to tell my grandma that we’d done it at all. My dad said that were his mom still around, she would have physically prevented us from jumping. But up there, in the sky, it didn’t feel dangerous. It just felt like something everyone should experience.
Now, I show everyone the videos so I can keep reliving my time falling from the sky. It was an early birthday present to myself, a day I will never forget.