The guide tells me to run, so I do. I run down the hill until the parachute opens and catches the wind, making it impossible for me to continue moving forward. But I don't stop. He said run, so I continue to try and push myself forward, with little success. Then I start to feel myself rising off the ground. The guide calls out, telling me to keep running, and I think, Buddy, I'm only 5Ɖ". My feet are already off the ground. But I am supposed to do what he says, so I continue to move my legs in a running motion, even though I'm already two feet off the ground. “Sit back!” he yells, and I lean back into the seat of my harness. Then suddenly I'm flying, plain and simple.

Last summer, my brother had just graduated from high school, and I had just finished my sophomore year. My parents had planned for us to take a family vacation to the Canadian Rockies, but due to flooding we changed our destination to Telluride, Colorado, a ski town in the Rocky Mountains no bigger than two square miles. Everyone in town told us great things about the skiing, but it was the middle of June and there wasn't a snowflake in sight. So what do you do at a snowless ski resort? For my family, the answer was go paragliding.

Gravity no longer affects me. I now live in the sky. The clouds are houses. The birds are my neighbors. The winds are roads, guiding me from place to place in my parachute car. The ground does not exist. Other people do not exist. They do not live in the sky. They are members of the Earth, and my membership has just expired.

“Do you want to try some tricks?” my guide asks as he takes a picture of us with his GoPro camera.

“Sure,” I reply, swallowing my fear. He pulls the cables connected to the parachute, causing us to dip to the right and then tilt up to the sky.

“How was that?”

“Let's not do that again,” I call back to him, focusing on the mountains until the dizziness fades.

“Okay, we can just glide,” he replies, laughing.

The wind whips around me, but the sun keeps me warm. Below my feet lies the town of Telluride. Up here it looks so insignificant. Up here the sky lacks imperfections and the stress and confusion of the real world do not exist. You can't fly when there is a lot on your mind; your thoughts will weigh you down. That is flying's magic. It forces you to keep an open mind and let new thoughts and perspectives fill your head. Maybe if humans did this all the time, we would all be able to fly.

As I watch the town glide by, I notice things that I had not seen when grounded on earth. Children ride their bikes home from a playground. A man walks up to a young lady and hands her a bouquet of flowers. An elderly couple leaves a store carrying groceries. A family of three stands at a grave. There's even a house painted like a rainbow. They do not see each other, but I see them all, and this idea brings a sadness that threatens to pull me back to the ground. They do not understand how connected their lives are, how each of them shares experiences with the others. They are wrapped up in their own lives and troubles. It's a shame. Maybe if they took the time to go flying, they would see that someone has painted a house like a rainbow.

I don't realize how low we are until the guide tells me to get ready to land. I wait for my feet to come in contact with the ground, and then I stand up, letting gravity take over again.

“What did you think?” the guide asks as he unhooks my harness.

What a loaded question. Is he asking how I feel about the experience of paragliding, or did he sense that I had an epiphany up there among the singing birds and the whistling winds? I realize, obviously, that his inquiry is directed toward paragliding, and again I am reminded how focused people are about what concerns them and not much else. However, I am grateful that during our flight the challenge of making sure that we didn't fall to our deaths probably took up most of his focus. Still, I decide to take the opportunity to enlighten him, just as gliding while attached to his parachute had enlightened me.

“Someone painted their house like a rainbow.”