54 Holiday specials The Economist December 18th 2021
of birdsandmenSince humans
have existed,
they have
envied birds.
They long to
fly like them;
to see as they
do, sharply...
...with a hawk’s eye; and to sing like them, through in
struments or with their own duller, heavier bodies. For
some, it is not just a matter of strapping on feather
wings, caulked with tar or wax, and jumping off a
church tower; or of putting on a feathersuit, like Pap
ageno in “The Magic Flute”, and trilling on a pipe. For a
handful of men (it seems always to be men), the aim is
to become birds, as far as they can.
In March 2006 the most famous birdman of recent
times, Angelo d’Arrigo, fell to his death in Sicily. He
was 44, a passenger in a tiny plane that suddenly nose
dived at an air show. For him, this was a large and lum
bering craft. Normally a hangglider carried him, float
ing on currents of air. Thus he had drifted over Everest
at nearly 30,000 feet (9,000 metres), and over Aconca
gua in the Andes at 9,100 metres, a world record. He al
so held the record for the longest horizontal free flight,
1,830km (1,140 miles) without landing, relying only on
the wind and the rigid wings that replaced his arms.
For his stunts over the highest mountains, a friend
would give him an aerotow with a microlight to a suit
able altitude. Lower down he used a small 5kg motor
for takeoff and landing, but for nothing else. He kept
quiet because he was gliding alongside birds, learning
at source how their great migrations were done.
His first such journey was in 2001, flying with des
ert hawks from Senegal to the Mediterranean. In 2003
he made a similar voyage with six endangered western
Siberian cranes. The six had been raised in captivity, so
he had to show them their migration route from Sibe
ria to the Caspian Sea in Iran, some 5,500km. It took six
months. Each evening he would choose their resting
place. As they flew through a polar storm the cranes,
trusting in his gaze like children, understood that with
him they were safe. His last project, almost completed
when he died, was to introduce two young condors to
the Andes by soaring with them among the peaks.
He had raised both the condors and the cranes from
the egg. While they were still in the shell he made bird
sounds to them and played them the noise of the hang
glider motor, so they would think it natural. When the
condors, Inca and Maya, were hatched, he put a black
mask over his shaggy hair to commune with them.
When they fledgedhe put on his hangglider wings,
painted black and white like their own, so that he
could mantle them like a parent as he fed them. When
they were ready to fly he took them up on Mount Etna
and taught them with his own crouching, running and
jumpingoff. Eventually the three soared together. He
called his project “Metamorphosis”: man into bird.
His hanggliders were based mostly on Leonardo da
Vinci’s sketches in 1505 for his uccello, or great bird.
Leonardo had used wood, leather, rope and canvas,
dooming it with too much weight, but d’Arrigo could
use aluminium tubes and polyester to create, as close
ly as possible, the wings of a bird. The hangglider
wings he settled on ended in a single upturned blade,
as close to a condor as he could get. In these, as he glid
ed over Aconcagua, he felt he had become the bird.
His aim was neither fame nor world records. It was
simply to “ride the waves of the sky and the wind”, ut
terly free and as birds did, by instinct. His desire to
soar was like a fever. Planespeed was purely mechan
ical; aviators had lost their link to nature. That was
why he had to learn the secrets of lowerspeed flight by
merging with birds. He flew, like a great pianist play
ing, with his eyes closed. And then he was truly alive.How men (and women) yearn to be
at one with the spirits of the air