The Joy of High Places Page 7

  Above the earth, it looked different, especially when he was thousands of feet high. Geographic features were easy to see, but mountains and hills seemed flatter and lower from above. He was often surprised to find a landing area quite steep when from higher up it had appeared to be flat. Usually he flew at between 3000 and 7000 feet – flyers measure height in feet rather than metres – and one day he reached 9500 feet in a thermal. He could have gone higher but he wasn’t carrying oxygen – any higher than 10 000 feet and flyers are legally required to be on oxygen. It sounded terrifying to me to be so far above the earth with only a slim arc of nylon holding me up, but he said the higher the better.

  ‘It’s much safer than being close to the ground – if something goes wrong there is plenty of time to either sort it out, or throw the reserve,’ he said. ‘There’s also more time to find the next thermal and more chance of reaching it if it’s far away. And,’ he added, ‘the view from up there is more spectacular’.

  When I pushed him to tell me why he did it, what he really got out of it apart from the great view, at first he gave me evolutionary theory. That is, we are hard-wired to enjoy anything that develops survival skills, giving us an evolutionary edge – mobility, speed, dexterity, problem solving and especially the ability to use the forces of nature to achieve our own purposes. Flying did all of that. Then he’d realised from the look on my face that I wanted something more personal and grinned and said ‘Flying makes me feel good. I mean really, really good!! Happy, excited, stimulated, amazed.’

  Afterwards he wrote, trying to explain his experience more precisely:

  The feelings of just flying around, turning, swooping, skimming over the trees, floating along under a cumulus cloud, circling with soaring birds, landing softly or taking off from a hillside, are all thrilling physical and emotional sensations. When I lock into the core of a thermal there is a ‘yes!’ feeling and at the top I feel triumphant and then, immediately re-focused on what I need to do next. When the conditions are good, it is also a very liberating feeling to be able to just choose where I want to go and then fly there.

  He sent me a photograph of himself as a dot in the sky under a red and white wing. There was blue sky all around him and clouds beneath, then, far below, a farming landscape patterned with cloud shadows and, in the distance, mountains and a far blue horizon. He said he had often thought of painting the view from up there, ‘but to do it justice’, he said, ‘it would have to be painted on the inside of a large sphere and viewed from the inside’.

  When he said that, it made me realise how being up there, floating in the sky, gave him the sense of being in a 360-degree reality. When I’ve reached the highest pass walking across mountains, I have gained some sense of that: the great dome of the sky above and the land below. Of course, everyone on the planet is in that reality, but with the solid earth beneath our feet, I suppose we see in horizontal and vertical planes. He was inside the egg of the world, a tiny speck of matter at the beginning of the infinite universe, soaring and circling above the curved earth.

  On this day though, he was still only about 200 feet up, trying to climb using the usually reliable thermal triggers along the ridge. He had been circling for a while and it was starting to feel like he wasn’t going anywhere today. He knew from experience it would become fatiguing to keep pulling on the brakes on the turns when the rising air was weak. A series of punchy thermal bullets, narrow columns of rising warm air, lifted him, but then he lost them and flew into a moderate sink of falling cool air. It was hard work and nothing he tried was getting him any further ahead. Flying wasn’t about wandering in a dreamy fashion; it was a focused seeking of invisible paths. Today wasn’t going to be the day he soared above the glorious world chatting to wedge-tailed eagles.

  He decided to head back in for a landing on the bomb-out and try again later on. Sometimes, as the afternoon progressed, there were better thermals and cloud-suck – the lift created under clouds by the latent heat of evaporation released during condensation – so it could be worth sitting back on the hill and para-waiting for a while. He turned back and flew towards the bomb-out from the direction of the launch site for a clear approach, away from the stands of gum trees at the bottom. There were still plenty of punchy updrafts, so he was alert for any sudden changes. A sudden strong updraft near landing could collapse the wing and leave him in a very dangerous position.

  He slid his legs out of the pod, ready for landing, and made a wide 180-degree turn for his final approach. He scanned the trees and the grass for any signs of unusual movement, especially the sudden flutter of dry leaves and dust on the ground, but the soft green regrowth from the recent rains gave nothing away.

  He glided in gently and was in the middle of the landing site, just a few metres above the ground, when he was suddenly shot straight upwards in a violent twisting corkscrew of air. He realised afterwards it was a whirlwind, or dust-devil, but without the tell-tale dust – the short spring grass had hidden the signs. But at that moment there was no thought, only the sensation of his body being spun upwards in a nightmare whirl. The wild twisting upthrust caused a total collapse of the wing and the force of the swiftly rising air was so fierce he kept going upwards, reaching about 40 feet, the height of a four-storey building. He was at the same height as the wing itself as it tried to disentangle and re-open. The lines were slack and the leading edge of the wing was pointing towards the ground as it began to reinflate – and then it collapsed again. There was no time to reopen the wing or use his reserve. From four storeys up, he plummeted, feet first, towards the ground.

  ‘Just eternal blackness now,’ he thought. It was the only thing in his head, he told me later. Since his teenage rejection of religion, he had refused the comfort of any kind of afterlife, any kind of God. Now, as he faced eternal non-existence, he didn’t change his mind.

  As he braced himself for impact, he made one almighty effort and flared, pulled on the brakes of the just-reopening wing, as hard as he could a second before hitting the ground. That last-second flare changed the angle of impact from 90 to 60 degrees – and saved his life.

  ‘I hit the ground very hard,’ he told me later in an email. Every time I read that comment, I think he deserves some sort of award for understatement. Dropping to the ground from four floors up, I imagine you would hit very hard.

  His legs buckled instantly and the bottom of his spine hit the ground with tremendous force. He felt two large bangs, like fire-crackers going off in his back. His first thought was a surprised recognition that he was still alive. No eternal blackness. Then he realised he couldn’t feel or move anything from the waist down and knew immediately that his back was broken. At that moment he was sure he would never walk again.

  His injuries, later catalogued, were: a burst fracture of the T12 vertebra with shards damaging spinal nerves; stable fractures of the T2, T4 and S5; a chip off a higher vertebra; two broken ribs; severely bruised and battered feet, ankles and knees; nerve damage in the right hip and leg; and trauma to the lower bowel and bladder.

  He didn’t know any of that yet. He was alive and had to get help. Although the upper half of his body was in severe pain, he could move his torso and arms. He took his gloves off and pulled his radio out of his flight-suit pocket, and called for help. He can remember exactly what he said.

  ‘This is Barney. I’m in the bomb-out. I’ve crashed. My back is broken. I can’t move or feel anything from the waist down. I need help.’

  There was no reply. He realised the radio must have changed channels in the crash, so he took his glasses from his pocket, changed the channel and called again. This time he received a reassuring response from Jason, who was flying nearby.

  While he waited, he tried to detach his wing but the carabiners were under him, impossible to reach. He could see other flyers, Drew first and then Jason, spiralling down from the cloud-base to land beside him, so he waited. But the dust-devil suddenly showed its truly diabolic nature, returning and switching directions
, instantly re-inflating his wing. He was picked up and swung along with just his toes touching the ground, dumped down again, then dragged, broken-backed, for 40 metres before he could pull down on the risers and bring the wing back under control. Now his gloveless hands were burned red-raw from pulling on the strings to save himself from the dreadful battering.

  I find this moment, the dragging after the fall, more unspeakable than anything else. The fall is terrifying to think of, but the broken-backed dragging is sheer horror. It seems a stroke of extreme malice, even for the Fates who care less than nothing for any of us. Just leave it at flinging the body to earth, why don’t you?

  Drew landed and unclipped his own wing then ran towards him, followed by Jason and then Kirsty, Al and Bridgette. They knelt beside him, asked him foolishly if he was all right. They told him to lie perfectly still. Gavin, who had stayed back at the launch site, contacted the ambulance and coordinated messages from other emergency services – but didn’t yet let Jenny know. Barney wanted to know what he was facing first. He had survived when he thought he was about to die and didn’t know whether that was a good thing or not.

  ‘This has actually happened,’ he kept thinking as his mind struggled to make what had previously been an imaginary situation, into a real one, presenting it over and over. Soon, but not yet, the idea would stop slipping off the shiny surface of consciousness and gain the bleak texture of reality.

  He would be a paraplegic for the rest of his life. His brain circled relentlessly over the many things he would never do again; the reality of not being able to stand, walk, run, dance, have sex, fly, or even go to the toilet. No more wandering in the sky, nor on the earth. The loss of independence. Being in a wheelchair forever and being a burden to Jenny. He dreaded having to tell her the news. And then he felt grateful that at least it didn’t happen while Mum was alive; it would have been too distressing for her to bear.

  I have to say this last remark reveals more than anything else how limited my knowledge of my brother had been in the past. To feel gratitude for sparing someone else pain at such a moment strikes me as extraordinary. Then I remember when our mother was dying the year before, he made the ten-hour drive from his home in Murwillumbah to Wellington to be with her during her last days. Kevin, our younger brother and a Buddhist, was there at the same time. We had a roster, all of us taking turns to sleep in her room and tend to her every hardly-existent need. Kevin rang me one day while Barney was out, praising his gentle and loving care of Mum.

  ‘He gives her a little spoonful of mashed banana and a little sip of water, and he wipes her face and holds her hand.’

  I was surprised, as I was meant to be. Even mentioning it carried the subtext: ‘We didn’t expect this of Barney did we, huh?’ I hadn’t been the only one in the family to build a simple and inaccurate picture of him.

  He lay on the soft grass while the others gave him water, talked to him and held his wing over him for shade. He was dressed for high altitude and realised he felt too hot in the midst of the extreme pain. He clenched his teeth and waited. The others kept talking to him, reassuring him that things were perhaps not as bad as they seemed and that help was already on the way. He said afterwards he couldn’t begin to describe his gratitude for the fact that his comrades – that’s what he called them – were there with him.

  ‘I never realised before how much we need other people to survive,’ he said.

  The ambulance arrived after about 40 minutes. The paramedics asked him questions and tried to diagnose his injuries but didn’t give him any painkillers – when spinal cord injuries are suspected, painkillers are withheld because the medication can interfere with the specialist’s diagnosis. He kept clenching his teeth while the paramedics cut him out of his wing and flying suit and then lifted and strapped him onto a stretcher. Twenty minutes later, the medical helicopter arrived. The doctor on board also didn’t administer painkillers – and warned him that the helicopter would vibrate a lot as it revved up to take off and that it was going to hurt.

  ‘He wasn’t wrong,’ Barney said.

  Once they were airborne the flight was smooth and was ‘okay’. Barney lay on his back staring at the padded ceiling while the doctor kept a close eye on him. They flew him to the specialist spinal unit at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra hospital, where the helicopter landed on the roof. Hospital staff, nurses and doctors, ran out and he was trolleyed to an emergency theatre, nurses plugging in electrodes and cannulas and doctors calling out directions and ordering equipment as they ran.

  ‘Just like on TV shows,’ Barney said.

  The damage was quickly assessed. First, before the operation, Barney had to sign an indemnity form. The surgeon stressed that all he could do was to prevent the bone pieces from further cutting his spinal cord. Only time would tell, he said, the extent of the nerve damage and how much of it would repair. He hoped for the best, but he made clear that there was no guarantee Barney would walk again. He explained that as well as the danger of further damage to his spinal cord, there was a chance he could also lose his sight as a result of the operation.

  The surgical team was introduced to him, which seems oddly polite in the circumstances – Barney says he remembers the introduction happening but not anyone’s names. Then he was anaesthetised and the surgeon began the delicate five-hour operation on the shattered T12, the lowest thoracic vertebra at the inward curve of the spine. He pulled the shards of bone away from the spinal cord and stabilised it by binding it with titanium rods to the vertebrae above and below it. The T12 is in the region that sends messages to and from the legs, so that any hope of walking again depended on the success of this reconstruction. It was the evening of the day the accident happened and none of us yet knew any of this.

  Auden wrote in ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’, his lovely poem on Brueghel’s painting of Icarus falling into the sea, that cataclysm and suffering happen ‘While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’. I’d had a quiet Thursday at home. It was our older son’s birthday, but he had gone out with his girlfriend, and Anthony and I had walked along the water-front near where we live to Mrs Macquarie’s Chair. It was the usual short walk down the McElhone Stairs, across the wharves and along the harbourside under paperbark gums and banksia. Weathered sandstone created natural sculptures along one side of the walk; on the other the waves lapped against the sea wall as always. It was spring and grevilleas and bottlebrush were blossoming, but the evening was cool so we walked quickly.

  When Kathy – the oldest in the family and a trained nurse – rang next morning, I knew from the tone of her voice something was wrong. She told me that Barney had had a flying accident, that he had broken his spine in several places and it looked like he wouldn’t walk again. I remember thinking, Barney will never fly again. In those first moments, it seemed worse than the fact that he wouldn’t walk again. And, of course, I thought about Icarus. The non-existent Gods would always have their way.

  Chronologies

  Most of the unfolding events of Barney’s accident and what happened in the following weeks and months, I learned much later on. I have to acknowledge my lack of awareness of the detail of his purgatory at the time. And the detail is what matters. You don’t have to take so much notice of suffering if you don’t see the detail. It’s just a word. It has to be broken down into its moments, the generalities scraped away.

  I had already booked flights to Europe and within a week was walking from France into Spain, not oblivious, but with no real idea of his moment-by-moment struggle. I hadn’t gone up to visit him before I left. I had work, a class to teach, and I had thought there wasn’t enough time to get to the hospital in Brisbane and back in the few days I had left.

  It seems brutal to even mention my own walking alongside this moment. What am I doing putting my hundreds of kilometres of trekking in the same cartography as his few metres of agony? They don’t overlap, they are not even parallel. Nor are our time streams measurable by the same cloc
ks; suffering and pleasure run in different chronologies. His story is stalled in unbearable moments, mine is in weeks and years.

  And yet we have found ourselves meeting in our stories for the first time. As I walked the old paths of Europe I thought about family, how more and more central it becomes in the labyrinth of memory: I thought about my brothers and sisters, my mother who had died a year ago, but especially I thought about Barney. I imagined him flying, swooping elegantly through the sky, and then, in a few horrifying seconds, hurtling feet first towards to the too-solid earth. It’s a moment that doesn’t bear imagining in too much detail and yet I kept returning to it; the moment he hit the ground, believing he would either die or never walk again.

  I thought of him, still think of him, lying on his back in the paddock, wondering if he was dead. And then knowing he wasn’t. One moment life was the same as it always was, and then, a moment later, flesh and bones were mangled and the sun just kept on shining. ‘The sun shone / As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green …’

  Flashes of our childhood returned to me, unrelated to anything in the present: a phrase, ‘the scent of magnolias’, from a ghost story he let us listen to on his transistor radio as we lay out on the parched summer lawn one night; hearing him pluck, note by note, ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ on his guitar; him deriding me when I said I wanted to read ‘the classics’, knowing I had no idea what ‘the classics’ were; me sneaking into his room to read the book about creatures of the deep sea he had hidden under the bed; admiring him and all my brothers in their cricket whites, sleeves rolled up ready to go to town; crying to Mum in the kitchen because he had taunted me, again, about my horrible red hair and freckles; watching him hang over the back of a kitchen chair, tracing with his finger the lino pattern when we were meant to be praying the Rosary. They were random and insignificant scenes, as if my brain was splicing together a video, not of highlights, but the daily life of ordinary squabbling kids.