Denmark

MY MOMENT

Learning a Wing Again, in the Wind.

Soon after earning my DHV licence, I went to Denmark for two weeks of ground handling with Mike Kuhn. I believed these skills mattered. The beach was very windy; we used small wings of roughly eight to ten square metres and sometimes held one another to avoid being dragged. We finished exhausted, even racing five kilometres while handling our wings.

Mike could handle a full-size glider with astonishing ease. Wind and thunderstorms interrupted training, but he made good use of suitable breaks.

I remember a newcomer arriving with his girlfriend and opening a full-size wing in strong wind. He was dragged and tumbled along the beach until, as I remember it, Mike lifted off from the flat beach and flew over to help him. It stayed with me as a lesson in both skill and judgement.

Another memory still seems extraordinary: I recall seeing a bird carrying a kite line in its beak, as though flying a kite itself. I cannot explain what I saw. Later I told the mountaineer Luo Jing that nobody believed the story. She simply said, “I believe you.”

Her quiet reply stayed with me: the feeling of being heard, even when an experience is hard to explain. Those two weeks brought a great improvement in my ground handling, along with memories of wind, exhaustion, admiration and understanding.