From 6 to 56 in fifty years - part one
Fifty years ago, I was a kid growing up in Richmond, Nelson. Richmond was then a cosy semi-rural New Zealand pueblo, a town of neat weatherboard houses and lush gardens on quarter-acre sections. It rested at the foot of a line of soft green hills, as if it was left behind by an ebbing tide. The Barnicoat Range had adventure written into its grazed slopes - when you’re six years old, five hundred metres is an altitude of Himalayan proportions, and whatever lay beyond those hills was as unknowable to a young boy as the far side of the moon.
I don’t remember what spawned the desire to fly but the bug bit me hard. There was a favourite and recurring dream of spreading my arms and gliding above the streets and houses of my home town, and I remember looking up at a light plane flying overhead and feeling a powerful yearning to be in the air. I wanted to fly.
My grandparents had books that fed my dreams. Some were pocketbooks filled with drawings of pioneering aircraft: the flying machines of Curtis, Farman, Voisin, Bleriot, Latham and others. Somehow their open cockpits, wire-braced wooden frames and cheesecloth skins had an accessibility and honesty that made them more appealing than the Pipers and Cessnas that I would watch flying from the local airport. Grainy black-and-white encyclopaedia photos of Otto Lilienthal’s athletic frame dangling beneath his beautiful 19th century gliders seemed to say that flying - real flying - could be liberating, fun, and maybe even achievable.
So for a six year old, the most plausible path to the skies was obvious: build a variation of a Lilienthal monoplane glider, carry it to the lofty summit above home, and fly it down to land on one of the grassy meadows on the outskirts of town. Some stray timber was gathered from the woodpile behind the carport. Dad’s hammer came out of the garage, and a few of his nails later, Richmond’s first hang glider was ready for flight.
I don’t recall asking the tower for clearance. No doubt Air Traffic Control was too busy attending the needs of my siblings at the time to pay attention to aviation history in the making. So, discrete test flying began on the footpath of the upper end of Queen Street. Hoisting the wooden crucifix to armpit level and channeling Otto, I sped down the footpath as fast as I dared. Maybe I didn’t allow for a tailwind; maybe the rectangular airfoil section wasn’t as effective as hoped; maybe I just didn’t run fast enough, but flight didn’t quite happen. I seem to recall that I wasn’t too surprised by the failure – even six year olds don’t entirely believe in magic – but even though my feet never left the ground, in my imagination, I thought I felt the glider trying to lift me into the blue skies over Richmond, trying to respond to my delicate weight-shifting as we wheeled and soared and carved graceful arcs over 5 Wilkes Street before settling down gracefully among the sheep and rabbits. In my mind, foot-launched flight was nearly achieved that day.
It would take another fifty years before I would walk to the top of the hills behind my parents’ house, pull a lightweight wing out of a backpack and fly down to a little grass field on the edge of Richmond. The five decades it took to bring the kid’s dream to life have been coloured with the fun and craziness and vibrancy of a few different flavours of flight, from BASE rigs to gas turbine helicopters. But I've still got the soul of that six year old and my greatest love is reserved for the simplest, grass-roots forms of aviation: foot-launched free flight. A wingsuit comes closest to the dream of flying on outstretched arms, and in my eyes, Lilienthal's glider is the most beautiful aircraft to ever grace the skies.
I’m full of genuine admiration for those who are pushing the boundaries of free flight. The world is a better place for their ventures and I’m tremendously grateful for their inspiration, imagination and daring. But I’ve no desire to fly huge cross-countries across Texas with Jonny Durand or join Gavin McClurg on an epic ‘vol biv’ adventure across the Alaska Range. I’m completely okay with being an ordinary Joe who finds his own extraordinary moments of magic in simple and very achievable ventures in the outdoors. For me, the simplest of adventures - such as a five minute flight from a low hill above Richmond - can provide the richest rewards.
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