New Hampshire Public Television was recently given a bequest to produce a documentary on the migration of broad-winged hawks. The good news was that we get to follow them to their wintering habitat in a preserve in Costa Rica. The bad news was that some genius at the station dreamed up the idea of demonstrating the apparently effortless flight of hawks by sending the aged host of the show (the guy who keeps recommending new experiences for old folks) up in a hang glider to experience for himself and demonstrate for the viewers the wonders of gliding on thermals and ridgeline updrafts.

I’ve wanted for years to do it; but recent additions to and subtractions from my undercarriage have left me unable to run fast enough to take off and, at the end of the flight, to land on my feet. “Don’t bring those joints back broken,” the surgeons last warned me, “because we can’t fix them again.” My wife and daughter, when they heard about the idea, thought it a great one, but doubted I would survive. Both of them wanted to be there to watch if I took to the skies.

“Not to worry,” I assured them. “I don’t have disability insurance, the station claims that my workmen’s comp doesn’t cover hang-gliding accidents, and the flight center will no doubt require me to sign a waiver of all claims should anything go wrong for any reason. Besides, I still have a cord or two of wood to get in before cold weather.

“What I’ll do,” I said, “is interview the pilot – it’s a tandem flight – and we’ll talk about what’s going to happen and what we’re going to experience. Then we’ll tape the cameras to the glider, and a videographer can go up in my place. I should be home by two.” Privately, I prayed that Hurricane Gustav would speed up, turn right a smidgen, and render it impossible.

No such luck. When I pulled into Morningside Flight Park in midmorning, the windsock was showing a light northwesterly breeze off Mount Ascutney, the few clouds overhead were beginning to flatten on their bottoms – an indication of active thermals, which hawks and gliders of all kinds rely on – and the friendliest guys in the world came out of the hangar to say hello and, by their conversation, give me to understand that I was going up. Steve Prepost, the pilot and instructor, told me he had over 3000 flights under his belt with nary a scratch. And, contrary to my fears, the glider was on wheels – kind of like an oversized grocery cart with big nylon wings

The video crew arrived and began taping and screwing cameras carefully to the aluminum frame of the glider. Steve and I went back to the office, where I signed everything but a blank check agreeing to hold harmless everybody in the world, no matter what. And finally we trundled the glider, behind an ATV, out to the grass airstrip.

The tug plane pulled in ahead of us, with what Steve called “the world’s best tug pilot” at the controls. The towline tightened, we began to roll, and within only ten yards or so we were off the ground and climbing, bucking slightly as the ultralight pulled us through the air currents.

We climbed for quite a while, circling in thermal updrafts whenever the tug plane found them. About 5000 feet the air turned hazy, wet, and decidedly chilly. “We’re up in the bottom of the clouds now,” Steve announced. “We don’t want to go any higher because it can get pretty bumpy up in there.” I concurred heartily.

Steve had warned me there’d be a jerk when the tow rope disconnected, but I forgot. When the sudden lurch occurred, I was sure we’d broken something important, and were about to break some others. But we slowed down, the flight became smoother, and we swooped around just like a huge bird, hunting for lifts. The Connecticut River valley spread out green beneath us, with Springfield and Claremont both in view.

Leonardo da Vinci, way back at the end of the 15th century, was the first to design a glider. Nobody knows if any of his designs ever flew until the present day, when gliding enthusiasts have made a few flights with them. The first to get a manned glider off the ground consistently was a German, Otto Lilienthal. Like da Vinci, he pursued the ornithopter, which would flap its wings like a bird, and never could have worked. Also like his idol, he felt almost reverential about the air: “To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. But to fly is everything.”

I could see, as we swooped first upward and then down, slowly losing altitude and circling back toward the landing field, how some people could get mystical about soaring. But I have to admit that anxiety was closer to the surface than mysticism. We passed a hawk floating easily on a thermal, utterly undisturbed by the much larger bird beside him clutching two human beings in its talons. We crossed the river, Steve cautioning me that we would land perhaps faster than I might expect, in order to maintain control next to the ground. He circled over a ripe cornfield, lined up with the runway, and it was over. What a trip! That experience might just count for two weeks.