Which as much as anything explains my jumps. I enjoy the writings of Black Elk and some of Emerson's essays, but the Eastern mind seems a lot clearer to me. Since I don't drink anymore, I break up the tedium by reading stuff like The Book of Five Rings Hagakure: Way of the Samurai The Tao Te Ching. The stairs to the top ascend in darkness, and I climb them two at a time.Ī radio plays music, and I listen to breaks in static on the black call box. Those times I depend on the quiet darkness to remind me that the park is closed, and I am alone. In its lobby I keep a gear bag and a ranger uniform I hustle in after a jump and emerge moments later as Ethan Landry, park ranger. The Museum of Westward Expansion, at the base of the arch, has the dimensions of a football field. Sometimes I spiral in descent, like water going down a drain. Three seconds of free fall, about twenty more guiding the canopy down. Wind explodes so hard and loud I might be disintegrating. Gichin Funakoshi tells us that all truth is contained in dreams. In that moment I feel I might be straddling the sleeping intersection of a country's dreams. The arch, made of Pittsburgh steel, is called the Gateway to the West, and when my leg hangs out the window and high winds break on my face, I can stare down at the dark forest or turn to a far window beyond which St. My goggles, however, are the blue glass of fourth-generation night-vision. It holds an Ace 240-square-foot canopy, and my gear is black: helmet, knee and elbow pads, scarf for my nose and mouth. I use a Perigee II, a Velcro-closed, single-parachute container made by Consolidated Rigging. I patrol under purple sky (you can't see stars this month), and after surveying the grounds with my official National Park Service binoculars, I squeeze out my window and drop off the top of the St. Ninety acres of grass and trees below, bridges over the river to the east, and the lights of St. The park is deserted, and I keep watch from a small window in a wall of steel 630 feet above the ground. I work from eleven at night until six in the morning. Something erupted at the Dowling Industrial factory, and the gases are making our sunsets plum and plutonium orange. Parents grimace while pulling their kids through the Museum of Westward Expansion, and barges moan down the Mississippi. Then the city enters another torpid and simmering May.
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