The air above the Palouse was a playground for more than just birds this weekend. Many people may have noticed the airplanes buzzing around the sky every 20 minutes or so, and if you happened to look out the window at the right moment, you would have seen tiny figures falling from10,000 feet.
Hosted by Boise-based Skydown Sports Skydiving School and Inter-State Aviation, about 40 people were able to skydive between Moscow and Pullman Saturday and Sunday. As friends and families looked skyward, they drifted smoothly to land in a wheat field, with shouts of joy and grinning from ear to ear.
I consider the air to be another continent. A space that shakes up your worldview, and makes you look at your physical and emotional life with a slightly different, broader perspective.
In a literal sense the Palouse, a unique area that is like no other in the world, is perhaps more commonly viewed in pictures, calendars and posters than experienced first hand. It has become the norm to go between home, work, class, bars and stores, occasionally getting restless and leaving for other places and cities far beyond these hills.
From the air this weekend, a pink sunset cast shadows over the rolling hilltops. Moscow was a quaint collection of buildings and trees far below, perched in the middle of a vast, scorched landscape. The distance between Moscow and Pullman looked as small as a fingernail, and until the parachute opened and slowed our descent, the only visible difference was a tiny red cougar slowly taking form.
Unlike modern day life, we were at the mercy of the elements. We constantly watched the horizon and the wind direction, examined the clouds and prayed for the sun to burn through the cloud layer keeping us grounded. We fell through white clouds and felt the temperature change with the pull of gravity.
A lot of the angst in society today surely comes from the separation of nature and our own true nature as human beings. We have become constructed — both our outer and inner worlds. As hunter-gatherer societies or even a few centuries ago, humans were able to live in harmony alongside nature. At the same time, we all desire to live more naturally: The desire for happiness, for time simply hanging out with friends and family, for sleeping through the alarm or for hiking, hunting or strolling along a beach.
In 1953, Charles Lindbergh said, “Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see …”
This is the beauty of gaining perspective about the world that surrounds us. We are able to rediscover the wonder lying all around that is often overlooked. And while traveling to another continent gives us this perspective, the value of knowing the environment we live in on a day-to-day basis is invaluable. It helps us see what is truly important.
And what better way to put all those little things in perspective than freefalling at 120 mph above it?