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A Bit of Transcendence
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14627 |
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LIFE
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5 / 1988 |
2,293 Words |
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Michael Rozek
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It's a radiant autumn morning in Seattle, and the wind is coming up from the west. From where I'm standing, in a tiny neighborhood park bordering Puget Sound, I can see the whole of the city's skyline. Meanwhile, my friend Jack Van Gilder is rummaging through a canvas bag in the trunk of his car--looking for the kite he wants me to fly.
I'm skeptical. There does not seem to be much inherent importance in flying a kite. And doing it will be so... so dull.
"I want you to experience putting one up on a long line," Van Gilder persists. Lost in thought, he finally pulls out a delta kite--a triangle of bright-yellow ripstop nylon twenty-seven inches from top to bottom, mounted on crossed light wooden dowels, with a flap of fabric underneath that expands to become a rudder once the kite is airborne. Clearly, this is a serious kite. Like all those in Van Gilder's car, he made it in his basement workshop ("to last at least ten years," he says proudly). On its face, painted in red and black, is the image of an animal baring its claws and teeth. "It's my Hungry Bear," he tells me. "I modeled it after a design I saw in a book about Alaskan native totems."
Quickly, to catch the wind, Van Gilder ties the kite to a roll of sisal, a rope even lighter than hemp, on a wooden reel with a handle. "Now," he shows me, taking the first and second fingers of my right hand and placing them on the string, "brake the line with these fingers, and reel in using your left hand." Then he grabs some loose line and runs toward the water, trailing the kite behind him so a breeze will catch it and bear it aloft. Soon, it buoys in the air.
"All right," yells Van Gilder, "let your line out five rotations. I do, and the kite floats up further, fifty feet above the ground.
"It's got its stability now," he shouts. "Let out the line for fifteen more rotations. And keep it straight."
I do; the kite continues up--straight up. And suddenly when it reaches the incredible--to me--height of two hundred feet, I sense what Van Gilder wants me to experience. The feeling has nothing to do with trying to fly flimsy paper kites, as I did when I was young. They were too crudely designed to be very stable in the face of wind, and either ripped quickly or were so unmaneuverable they would end up flying right into the boughs of trees. No, this kite flying--using a well-made kite and the right technique--is a whole new sensation. Above me, I see the face of Van Gilder's Hungry Bear. From this distance, I can hardly tell it's a kite. Instead, it looks like a living, flying... creature. I feel as though I'm in complete control of its destiny, just as when I play a fighting trout at the end of a fishing line; its tug of life, as it jumps in the wind, confirms this. The kite is part of me; when it flies, I'm up in the air with it. Now, with the fresh air and blue sky all around me, I finally do understand what kite flying is--and should be--all about: simply, a little bit of transcendence.
Which is why, of course, humankind has always made and flown kites. And why that effort's hardly been pointless--despite what people usually mean when they tell you to go fly one.
For example, some
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