Learning to Fly: An Uncommon Memoir of Human Flight, Unexpected Love, and One Amazing Dog
Steph Davis
Language: English
Pages: 220
ISBN: B008J4N6B4
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“It’s not so surprising that on the day of my fifth wedding anniversary I would be crouched in the open door of an airplane, thirteen thousand feet above the Colorado plains, about to jump out. That coincidence of timing really wasn’t.”
Steph Davis is a superstar in the climbing community and has ascended some of the world’s most awe-inspiring peaks. But when her husband makes a controversial climb in a national park, the media fallout—and the toll it takes on her marriage—suddenly leaves her without a partner, a career, a source of income . . . or a purpose.
In the company of only her beloved dog, Fletch, Davis sets off on a search for a new identity and discovers skydiving. Though falling out of an airplane is completely antithetical to the climber’s control she’d practiced for so long, she turns each daring jump into an opportunity to fly, first as a skydiver, then as a base jumper, and finds herself indelibly changed. As she opens herself to falling, she also finds the strength to open herself to love again, even in the wake of heartbreak. And before too long, she fortuitously meets someone who shares her passions.
Learning to Fly is Davis’s fascinating account of her transformation. From her early tentative skydives, to zipping into her first wingsuit, to surviving devastating accidents against the background of breathtaking cliffs, to soaring beyond her past limits, she discovers new hope and joy in letting go. Learning to Fly isn’t just an adventure but a woman’s story of risk-taking and self-discovery, with love at its heart.
together, Fletch zooming around everywhere. I’d already downshifted from runs to walks in the last year, and now hills were starting to get difficult for her little legs. I felt a cold stab of anxiety as she strained hard through her shoulders to bring her back legs up the last step. She was only twelve. I wasn’t expecting her to really be “old” for another seven years at least. It had never occurred to me before that Fletch might die, and now that it had, I considered it a pretty outlandish
aimless, unsure of how to fill my time or where to go. Suddenly I was wondering how I could possibly get everything done here in just three weeks. Time seemed to be speeding up. I had a lot to look forward to, so many things to plan. I felt ablaze with thoughts and ideas. I dug out my pocket calendar from the glove compartment of my truck and opened it to August and September. For the first time since I’d come to Boulder, I actually needed to think about what day it was and what I’d be doing next
projects for months. The slight wind died just as the parachute came to the ground, and we landed on hard-packed dirt with a strong thump, giving me a good whack on the butt as we dropped hard. Shaken and overwhelmingly glad it was over with nothing broken, I swore to everyone present that I would never jump again. I very much respected my new friends, whose base-jumping and skydiving obsessions both baffled and impressed me. As the years went by, it became something of a joke for us that
myself facing the metal arch instead of the empty air as the canopy opened. As I’d been drilled, I instantly pulled on the rear riser, the shoulder strap that rose from my right shoulder to the back of the canopy, to turn away from the bridge instantly, without even taking an extra second to pull down and release the main steering toggles like I would normally do after opening. This was an important reflex, and I wanted to have the muscle memory drilled into my body. Using the rear risers to turn
needed to let go of trying to make it back and focus on landing safely on the other side of the ditch in the green field, away from the fence line. The ground rushed up before me as I got closer, but I could see the field was flat and free of obstacles. The tall grass looked soft. Brendan’s voice came over the radio clipped to my chest strap, telling me to flare. I yanked down hard on both steering toggles, bringing my arms straight down to my thighs to pull down the back of the parachute in a