Riding The Waves

“A fine lot we are” I thought to myself as I zipped the jacket of a sling-wearing friend, I being only a few months sling-free myself, before we walked over to a crash-site turned memorial to mark the first anniversary of our friend Josh Ellison’s passing.

My first interaction with Josh in the Spring of 2021 amply demonstrated the kind of person he was and served as exemplar of the kind of paragliding community member I strive to be. He had passed his phone number to me through a shared friend after seeing me go through what is still a solid candidate for the scariest three seconds of my life. I didn’t have the words for it at the time but with subsequent experience it became evident that I had packed an entire SIV curriculum into an unplanned moment starting with less than 100′ of terrain clearance — a big asymmetric deflation followed by a spiral dive whose recovery transitioned into a spin in the opposite direction and from there a deep stall and a big surge I just barely checked in time to finish the ride by zooming over a large berm with a few feet to spare. When I spoke with Josh on the phone a couple of hours later I imagined him to be an old hand with 10-20 years in the sport compared to my five months but in reality his tenure only just slightly exceeded my own. He had no incentive to help me except that he saw a fellow pilot struggling and so took the initiative.

Over the years he would time and again support me in understated ways. Late in 2022, when I was kind of teetering on maybe having overcome my 2021 fear injuries but perhaps also struggling a bit after recently having to put another pilot on a helicopter, he gave me the nudge I needed to buy my next revision of gear and take my game to another level. “I think I might cry” he said at a dinner I hosted in January 2023 shortly before a series of trips on that new gear that would give me a “I think I’ve finally made it” feel in the sport. “I’m already crying so don’t hold back on my account” I replied. We were speaking of our respective brothers that we had struggled to help to varying degrees and the emotion was pretty raw. Later that year when I lost a second sibling, had taken a couple months off from flying, and was struggling to make the jump back into the air, I broke that drought by way of an invitation to help him launch a tandem and by the next day I was getting my own toes tugged off the ground. Over the coming months I would have my biggest flights to date in Utah and certainly some of my most meaningful.

I filled the October days between Josh’s fateful midair collision and his funeral with a variety of contemplative tasks which included breaking down my Kamado Joe grill, cleaning it up, replacing some parts, and putting it back together. In the course of doing so I realized that, by quirk of fate that included a Suncrest Snowmagaddeon followed by my sister’s suicide putting my culinary reality on pause, the ashes at the bottom of the grill were from our last meal together. I saved some in a couple of small pyrex containers, not knowing what I would do with them but feeling I should eventually do something.

The subsequent year would offer some really high highs and really low lows and I’ve been working to just expect nothing, do something, and take advantage of what life has to offer. Initially I thought that I might take the winter off from paragliding travel but that was exactly the wrong instinct and I’m glad I fought it (which notably required some help from friends on both the encouragement and logistics fronts). Heading south to Colombia for two sun drenched weeks of paragliding in January was just the celebration of life that I needed. And just as well since in the spring I finished separating my left rotator cuff which in the fullness of time may have thwarted any substantive flying for about a year all told. The recovery from this injury has been a grind, sometimes tedious and other times nightmarish, but on the whole it is a blessing from the universe that I have big problems to surmount and worthy prizes waiting for me on the other side of the struggle. There is no gratitude exercise quite like having everything taken away from you and steadfastly clawing it back. There is a lot of living that I must do to in some way compensate for the abrupt curtailment of the lives of others. Life will never be easy but we can choose between passively being crushed by the waves or actively learning to surf. We can wallow in grief for those we have lost or we can find some way to celebrate their lives.

Last night I attended the memorial ceremony proper put together by Josh’s family. I didn’t cry then because that didn’t seem to be the vibe. I had, however, “pre-gamed” a river of grief earlier in the day and after the crowd had dissipated and the sun had fallen I went to my car to retrieve an artifact that I took to Josh’s crash site to finish my grief arc for the day alone.