moab

I.

I'm lying next to you in the back of Nate and Sarah's car, watching through the sunroof as the power lines cut slashes through the twilight sky above us. I roll my head to the side, pillowed by my arm, to look at you. You're already looking straight at me, bright green eyes steadily meeting my gaze.

Your jump was perfect. Your jumps are always perfect. I can hear the rustle of nylon in the stowage beneath us; I can smell the faded minerality of the New River Gorge in the air, still caught in the fabric of your canopy.

You always glow after a jump, as though your blood is running itself ragged with joy through your veins, thrilled to have flipped over the side of a cliff and yet, miraculously, still be contained in your beloved vessel. I want to feel that, too.

I tell you that I wish they'd made good on their threat to prankishly PCA me from Mary's Gash the other afternoon. I say this because want to thrill you with my chutzpah, almost as much as I want to feel my feet swinging over the earth. I say this because I'm almost sure I would have survived.

You're careful.

"Not too fast, babe."

"Why not?"

"I don't want you to get hurt."

"Why not?"

I want you to say it.

I say it with my eyes and my lingering quarter-smile and my fingers on your sweater. I think you may have said it with the kiss you placed, so tenderly, above my brow.

II.

I'm making breakfast for everybody.

There's an assembly line going - a bowl full of cheerily-orange shredded cheese, a stack of steaming tortillas, a chopboard strewn with redolent cilantro, and a little saucepan of spicy vegan potato-and-veg (from which I plan to set aside my own portion).

The yard sale is in full swing. Nathan's dancing on the roof to curry shoppers from the passing cars. I can see you in the street, slinging a ball back and forth to a friend like a ten-year-old. There's a great-dane quality to your bounding strides; an ease to your laugh unlike anything I've ever heard. I smile. My toes curl. I keep fussing with the pots and pans.

I spoon and season and sprinkle and roll. As I work, I suddenly feel strange - like an impostor, almost. I want to earn these new friends. I want to belong here.

As I pad out across the bare wood to the front door, my cat and their dog are standing eerily close, looking up at me. There's no tension. They watch me pass, backlit golden by the morning sun.

As I step outside, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude.

III.

I don't like it.

You're standing at the edge, your canopy spilling over the side of Monkey Lips. There's a ledge below you, and a boulder. Some of the nylon is resting on the boulder. You can't see it from where you're standing.

I don't like it.

The photographer behind me, perched himself on a flaky promontory, sees it too. I ask him. He squints. I call out. You can't hear. I don't want to run to you; maybe you'd exit before I reached you.

Finally, another fella comes over to stand next to me. The minute he sees you, he bellows. You draw up your canopy and move back from the ledge.

My heart falls back down into my chest from where it was lodged in my throat.

This won't be the last time.

IIII.

I'm watching you tell stories at the dinner table.

I'm so lucky that my lips shiver to think about it.

on love, and other superpowers

"I think I need a montage," I said, taking greedy pulls from the weak Utah beer in my hand. It's been a good long time since I was surrounded by people I don't know, doing things I have no idea how to do - and covered in cover-your-mouth-awful poison oak, at that.

The girl who had never done more than amble up to a higher rock with a beer was suddenly pressed to outrun looming rainclouds by scrabbling up the sheer walls of a slot canyon. The girl who had all but rolled her eyes at the thought of a 30-foot ascent for a prettier view of Joshua Tree was suddenly vaulting up chimneys to a 600-foot-high exit point. The girl who didn't much like the idea is suddenly very, very keen for sticky shoes and a harness and some rope and some clinky things.

My upper body is as sore as my poison-plant rash is itchy, and that's sayin' somethin'. So worth it.

The balance of hand and foot and slide and stone has done interesting things. Commuting back from work on the bike today, I realized an eerily appreciable change in my balance - I perched my bike perfectly over its dead-stopped wheels for a solid few seconds before I realized I was doing it. It was startling. It was good. I want more.

i promise to be perfect

I'm fascinated by our recontextualization.

Over there, despite the off-putting plate tectonics of my vestigial life, we were simplified by the dynamics of the places we moved through. There was a simple poetry in the single backpack shoved in the back of that little blue Citigolf, white dashes flashing by on the pavement below, a hand resting on my knee. Back in the States, the overflow of comforts and options and niceties is almost stifling. We're working so hard, but it's so different.

I always thought I'd have to pay dearly for this. I've never had reason to believe that partnership didn't come with a hefty price tag - financial, emotional, aspirational - and that I'd never find anyone to truly keep pace, anyway. I'd gotten so close to settling, so many times, just-barely saved by part of me that's born to run, despairing at the practical uselessness of love.

Somebody's running with me - right next to me, on his own. In the same direction.

He's inspiring. He's brilliant. He never implies that I oughta put on the brakes and wait for him. He twists back his very own throttle and flashes me a great big smile.

C'mon, babe. No time to waste.

the envelope, please

I'm finally allowed to talk about it.

I've been invited to join an expedition in the spring of next year. It's not a trip. It's absolutely, positively nothing like a vacation. It's a BASE expedition to the arctic. It comes complete with a world-class, awe-inspiring group of co-travelers and some delightfully resonant environmental aspects. And there's me, bio number nine on the 'team' tab, managing the base camp.

I won't be jumping; I'll be doing much the same job that I do in production, helping out with the logistical heavy lifting. I'll be using my WFR (with any luck, quite lightly). I'll be learning a metric shitton. And I'll be having the time of my life.

...which will then segue into the next time of my life, and the time of my life after that, and after that.

Polar bears, me and some guys in flying squirrel suits are comin' to save you. Hang in there.

no return

"Skydiving is addictive," he said.

I believed him, but he hadn't told the whole truth.

"Better start a timer when you leave the drop zone," he should have said, "'cause you'll start to go slowly crazy over the course of days you're not wearing a parachute."

I'm chasing myself in circles around the room today, clearly in need of a fix.

inertia, joy, and boundlessness

I feel so light.

I'm moving so quickly under my own power. I'm busier than I've been in years, which is funny because my capacity for productive work has always been high. These days, when my energy peaks it's like sticking a finger into a light socket and, when I recharge, I recharge quickly.

This goal-laden calendar in front of me is playing testament to how solidly this is clicking into place - it's as though I'm an electromagnet, and I just figured out how to turn myself on.

learning curve

I.

It sounds counterintuitive, but it felt great to spend a long day at the DZ with absolutely no intention of jumping out of anything. Instead, I spent the day crawling around with the lead packer, learning how to convince my slippery behemoth of a canopy that it really, really wanted to squoosh down into the little d-bag. I packed it three times after I nailed it, just to be sure.

I'm fascinated by the design of my parachute. It's poetry. Despite the rawness of my fingers from the stows and the grouchiness of my knees from the crawling, I discovered that I really like to pack. I like to manipulate the individual parts of the thing, because I find them generally miraculous - and I like to have my hands full of little miracles.

After the class, I had the singular treat of being perched on a picnic table, congratulatory beer in hand. Three of us alternately swung from the low branches of a nearby tree and watched video of freefliers catapulting each other into the wild blue yonder. I learned about the Horny Gorilla and the See Ya Later, Mr. Bill. As the sun settled lazily down behind the Ortegas, we were howling with glee.

Pretty great day, actually.

II.

What's on tap (other than skydiving, Spanish, shootin', and my professional pursuits, of course):
* Keith Code school, for extra vroom
* WFR Certification, so's I can convince folks to let me ground crew for 'em
* Get my PADI OWD, because if I get eaten by a shark it'll be gorgeously foreshadowed in the narrative of my life

The goal? Every day, be awesomer.