A friend described in wonderful detail his feeling of flying. So second nature to him, it wasn’t him describing a memory. Even though it has apparently been some time, he described it as if he was in the air. He said “But in the end, there is nothing more magical, that you can do.” The way he described it I’m sure that is quite true.

Reading his post made me think of two stories. One, I told there about getting to fly a little plane when I was little. The other is quite wonderful in quite a different way.

Follow up:

It was the seventies, just as kids were being born. We had a tight group of really good friends. We had wives and some had kids, we had good jobs and were making money. We lived in a sleepy little back in time town in SoCal. Life, like the weather, was beautiful.

We spent a lot of time in the wilderness. Near us was a place the locals called “The Gorge.” It was a secret canyon out of a story book. Very few people knew it was there. Fewer still went there. To get there you would drive your car out to the end of the road and park. Slipping under the gate, you crossed the old quarry road, turned west and slid down the gully to the streambed. Down the stream there were several cool spots to picnic on a “beach” or an “island” in the middle of the stream.

If you kept going the stream wandered north and fell away from the path. The path climbed a little hill went around a corner and if you stopped and looked over the edge it was 100 feet down to a natural pool surrounded by smooth flat rocks. It was where falls once fell. A natural formation, seemingly right out of a fairy tale, carved out of the granite by water and wind and time.

Lush green landscape, birds singing, fish jumpin, bugs buggin, like a background out of a lost-in-paradise movie. You could follow the path and wind your way down till the path broke out onto the rocks.

Sitting there on the flat rocks it was as if you were back in time. No city sounds, not even airplane sounds could reach you down there. The water cold and clear and drinkable. Fish in there and you could see to the bottom in places. Clear as a bell.

A different time of life. The pool deep enough to jump off the rocks into. 6 foot deep in the middle or so. Smooth flat rocks warmed by the sun and cooled by the shade.

A brother-close friend and I went there once to sit in silence. Sitting there and looking up we noticed a place on the opposite hill that had what looked like a little cave. A rock had fallen out of the hill and left a hole. We decided to climb up and check it out. We spent an hour or two climbing straight up the side of the hill. We reached the spot and sure enough it was just big enough for us both to sit comfortably.

Before us was the opposite view than we were used to. From there you could see the winding S-curves the river made as it wound down the canyon. 60 feet up or so, we were just above the line of trees that grew by the water. Up around where the birds fly.

We sat there in silence and watched the day go by. After some time something caught our eye off to the right. A big thing. We turned to look and coming down the S-curve a huge California Condor soared through the canyon right at us. Huge it was. The most beautiful and majestic pterodactyl-sized bird you ever saw.

Just before he reached us he leveled out and took one sweeping stroke of his massive wings. Just below us, perhaps 8 feet or so. So close we could hear the sound of the whoosh of the 8 foot wingspan pushing air. WHOOSH!! It rings in my ears as I type this. He tipped his close wing low, showing us his entire back with out-streched wings and floated on that stroke without another as he followed the river below in front of us and around the point and out of sight. It happened so fast, 3 maybe 4 blinks and he was gone and we were left wondering if we had really seen it at all.

A wild California Condor with at least an 8-foot wingspan tipped his wings to me practically close enough to touch. On a Tuesday afternoon, not in a zoo, not in a park but in the wild. Free as a bird.

That is what my friend made me see when he described the flights of his youth. The Condor’s view. Free as a bird.