FREE FALLING
Falling through the air is one of the most common dreams that people have. This dream is thought to symbolize the lack of control we have over our lives. To some extent, we all have to deal with events that we can’t control, so maybe that’s why falling is such an apt symbol of our fears.
Seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke experienced the terror of falling one stormy Christmas Eve in 1971. Juliane was sitting in the window seat on a passenger plane out of Lima, Peru. She was on route to the city of Pucallpa in the Amazon forest with her mother, who was sitting between her and another passenger. Turbulence from the storm was causing the plane to lurch up and down. Then, in a single horrific moment, a bolt of lightning hit one of the plane’s fuel tanks and tore the right wing off. Lansa Flight 508 went into a nosedive, breaking apart in the process. As the filmmaker Werner Herzog, who made a documentary about Juliane’s experience, described it “She did not leave the airplane, the airplane left her.” The next thing Juliane knew, she was in free fall, still strapped to her seat.
She remembers falling head first with her seatbelt digging into her waist. The dark green jungle canopy spun rapidly below her. It was at that point that Juliane lost consciousness. When she awoke the next morning, she found herself on the floor of the jungle, still strapped to her seat. The two seats next to her from her row on the plane were still there, but nobody was in them. Her mother and the other passenger had vanished. How could she have survived an incredible 3,000-meter fall through the air?
Perhaps the absence of the other two passengers in the 3-bank seat caused a helicopter effect, similar to the seeds of maple trees that spin to the ground in the late summer. That, combined with an updraft of wind from the storm and the jungle canopy breaking her fall, helped her survive the fall from the sky. With a broken collarbone, a large gash in her right arm, and her right eye swollen shut, she made her way through the dense rainforest in search of help. A handful of sweets was her only source of food. Eventually, she found a small creek. At that moment, she remembered what her father - a biologist - had told her years before. “If you follow a stream, it will turn into a bigger stream, and then a bigger one, and eventually a river. Follow the river and you will ultimately reach a human settlement.” Down the stream and to a river she stumbled for days, braving poisonous snakes, insects, piranhas, and crocodiles. Maggots infested her arm and began eating her flesh. Hunger and thirst overwhelmed her, causing her to drink from the stream, while the harsh sun gave her 2nd-degree burns on her skin. By the 10th day, she could barely stand. Finally, she came across some loggers, who at first thought she was a mythical water goddess. They quickly tended to her wounds and helped her back to the safety of the city. Julianne was the sole survivor of the crash
While free fall was forced upon Juliane, there is one man who seeks it out for a living. Meet Jeb Corliss, otherwise known as the God of BASE Jumping. For as long as he can remember, Jeb always dreamed of flying. One of his earliest memories was when he was 6-years-old. He was sitting in the back seat of his of his aunt’s car watching birds jump from telephone poles, opening their wings and soaring through the air. He told his aunt that he wanted to do that, too. His aunt explained that when he got older, he would learn that humans can’t fly. “Maybe you can’t,” he replied, “but I’m going to.” And fly he has. Jeb has dedicated his life to realizing the dream of human flight. When he turned 18, he began skydiving, and that eventually led to the extreme sport of BASE jumping. BASE jumping is when you jump from a fixed structure, like a tower or cliff, achieve free fall, and then pull your parachute at the last second before making impact with the ground below. Through BASE jumping, Jeb discovered joy, purpose, and accomplishment. But he didn’t stop there. He quickly realized that if he wore a wingsuit, similar to the anatomic structure of a flying squirrel, he wouldn’t just fall straight down. He could also move horizontally. This was the closest thing to flying that man has ever known.
Jeb lives on the edge of life and death through his flights. And he doesn’t simply jump and pull his parachute. Instead, Jeb pushes the envelope by attempting the seemingly impossible. He flies through valleys and canyons, tracing the contours of cliffs, ridges, and mountainsides at death defying speeds. In one of his most recent incredible feats, he jumped out of a helicopter and swooped through Heaven’s Gate, a natural arch in China’s famous Tianmen Mountain, at over 300 km per hour, in front of thousands of people. The margin of error was so small that even the slightest miscalculation in the angle of approach or gust of wind would have meant certain death for Jeb.
The fear is powerful before and during the jumps, so much so that Jeb sometimes trembles and cries. But once he steps off that cliff or leaps off that helicopter, things get very simple: success is the only choice. As Jeb says, “It’s like a hurricane inside your head, every nerve ending is saying don’t do this. Once you take that step, there is no coming back. It will change you as a human being.”
As Jeb sees it, success is inevitable. He explains, “I don’t believe you can fail. You only fail if you give up. The second you decide ‘Oh, I’ll just give up.’ That’s you! You’re the one making that choice. You’re the one choosing to fail. You have to make the decision to fail. Whereas if you don’t ever make that decision; you say, ‘No, I’m going to keep going until it fricking happens, well then you don’t fail. You’re just in the process of making it happen.” And there’s no doubt Jeb lives by these words. In early 2012, while flying off Table Mountain in Cape Town, South Africa, Jeb’s lower body struck a rock ledge in mid-flight. He broke both ankles, a leg, and three toes while sustaining a major bloody gash in his skin that required skin grafts to close. It is amazing that he was even able to pull his chute. While some would have taken that incident as a warning sign to give up, Jeb saw it as simply another a stepping stone in the path to making his dreams come true. A year-and-a-half later, he was back in the air, making it happen again. His ultimate dream is to jump out of a helicopter and land without a parachute, realizing one of the last great challenges remaining on earth: human flight.
reason.
She was out of control, and her life was on the line. For Jeb, falling is a conscious choice, and he does have some degree of control. Of course, it is still terrifying, and he could die at any moment, but isn’t this true for all of us? One thing that none of us has control over is death. And since death is inevitable, we are all in a symbolic type of free fall. The end is the bottom of our fall, and we all reach it; no exceptions. But as Jeb explains after surviving another close encounter with instant death: “I’m just so happy. I’m just so happy to still be here. You know, my time in this world is limited. But the things that I can do with that time are not. We are all going to die. The question is are you going to live while you’re here.”
