gather in a jumble of tents, U-Hauls,
cars, RVs, and trucks loaded with
campers. Barry is their patriarch.
When I met him, he’d been jump-
ing for 39 years, including more than
2,000 tandem jumps with clients.
He had gray hair and a gray mous-
tache, a big belly and a bigger voice.
He’s not what you picture when you
think “professional thrill-seeker,”
but I found his age and experience
more comforting than any young
gun could have been. As they say in
Alaska, there are old pilots, and thereare bold pilots, but there are no old,
bold pilots.
When I pulled up, just before
10 a.m., most people were gathered
in camp chairs around a fire. I was
invited to sit down, offered tea and a
hunk of fry bread. I was here because
my three most potent physical fears
are of heights, speed, and falling.
And there was nothing, I figured, that
combined all three as effectively—or
as horrifically—as skydiving. My no-
tion was to take a blitzkrieg approach
to facing my fears. I would force my-
self to do the scariest thing I could
think of, in a full sensory assault on
my fear response, and if I came outnot hide out in the abbey. And in the
novel Dune, in the iconic Bene Ges-
serit “Litany Against Fear,” Frank Her-
bert wrote, “I will face my fear. I will
permit it to pass over me and through
me ... Where the fear has gone there
will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Fear, Herbert wrote, was the mind-
killer. I wanted my mind to live.I
’d arrived at the small airstrip in
the Canadian village of Carcross
several hours earlier. Among its
few claims to fame is the CarcrossDesert, billed as the world’s small-
est, a tiny collection of soft, rolling
dunes surrounded by snow-etched
mountains and boreal forest. Every
summer, a skydiving outfit based in
British Columbia caravans up here for
a couple of weeks and offers people
the chance to jump out of a plane,
plummet through free fall, deploy a
parachute, and eventually land in the
forgiving embrace of this tiny patch of
sand.
The pro skydivers live by the air-
strip, just outside the village. The vibe
of their encampment is somewhere
between summer weekend campout
and itinerant circus troupe. TheyI KNEW I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE EXCITED,
BUT I COULDN’T GET THERE. I EXISTED IN
A BUBBLE OF COLD CALM.rd.com 107First Person