Soaring Dreams
I was dozing in the passenger seat on the drive back home, and my wife woke me to point out an unusual sight: we were travelling parallel with a ridge of southern Berkshire Hills and above the ridge was what I can only call a swarm of paragliders and hang gliders, colorful fabric envelopes and wings circling and wafting over the green treetops. We saw flyers soaring on thermals, launching from a mountaintop clearing, and sailing down to land in rich fields in the valley below.
For a long time I've been interested in trying paraplanes—like ultralights with parasails for wings. I thought if I was going to bolt together my own aircraft it would be comforting to always have an open parachute above me. More recently I've thought that maybe a trike-style ultralight would be a smarter thing to fly, and I made motions toward trying this on both of our Hawai`i trips. But boy, those gliders over the ridge made soft wings look fun. I don't think I could bring myself to run off a cliff in a hang glider, but I might manage a hillside paraglider launch.
Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of the thermal riders; didn't think my 3x zoom was sufficient to bother and I wasn't fully awake. But I've done a little online research to determine that they were flying over Mount Brace, near the Dutchess/Columbia county line (that's New York State), and I've tracked down a couple of sites with pictures: Wierck's Paragliding Site: Brace Mountain and P&K Industries/Fly New York/Mt. Brace Outdoor Club - I think we caught the tail end of their Fly-in!
Comments
what a treat!
Posted by: bonnie | July 22, 2003 01:08 PM
Indeed. If you try it, be sure to take your digital camera!
Posted by: language hat | July 22, 2003 03:08 PM