The Maze (6 page)

“Sure they will! Canyonlands National Park is surrounded by cattle country for hundreds and hundreds of miles—almost all of it public land with grazing by per
mit. The ranchers lose two percent of their cattle every year to natural causes. Cattle even graze the meadows on the mountain ranges you see on the horizon. Those mountains will be within easy reach for these condors.”

“I don't think I'll look at the horizon.”

“Keep your eye on the road, such as it is. In addition to cattle, these condors will find deer, elk, bighorn sheep, jackrabbits, ground squirrels…. Everything that lives dies, and it all needs to get cleaned up. The Southwest is going to be Condor Country again!”

“That sounds like great material for a TV ad. Condors might get so popular there'll be a new cigarette brand named after them.”

Lon chuckled, and gestured grandly. “I can picture it: a guy on horseback, a condor in flight against a classic canyonlands background. The slogan:
COME TO CONDOR COUNTRY
. A vulture logo would be
perfect
for cigarettes. No warning from the surgeon general necessary on a pack of condors!”

“Light up a Condor! Or try our new menthol Condors—for that refreshing taste of the Ice Age!” To Rick's immense relief, they were almost down off the grade.

Lon was still chuckling as they pulled into camp. “Con-dors…you too can become carrion!”

Rick turned off the ignition. His T-shirt was drenched with sweat.

Rick was having the flying dream again. The Maze was spread out below him, the entire labyrinth of twisting canyons. From the air it didn't look intimidating at all. In fact, it made a pattern, it made sense. He was learning the secrets of all the hidden, intricate canyons, one after the next. Every single dead end was revealed for what it was.

Off to his right a dark shape was coming to join him: another flier. It was a bird, a very large dark bird.

One of the condors, he realized. It looked primitive, prehistoric, almost like a pterodactyl. Wing tip to wing tip, they left the Maze behind and flew out over the open ocean. His fingers were almost touching the condor's outspread flight feathers. His eye met the eye of the condor. The bird's eye was red.

Someone was trying to call him down by singing,
strangely enough. He couldn't make out the words, but he knew he couldn't land on the water. Panicky, he looked all around, beginning to doubt that he could fly. The condor was gone and land was nowhere in sight.

The voice, however, was still there. Someone was singing in a deep, booming, reassuring voice.

The song kept cutting through. Rick struggled to consciousness, toward that voice like a life buoy. He remembered that baritone. It went with the man with the beard. It was Lon.

Dawn was breaking. “What's going on?” Rick groaned.

“Wake-up call for my driver!”

“You're kidding.”

“Pull on your clothes! I got the truck packed!”

Packed for what? Rick thought. He reached for his jeans and some of the underwear Lon had allocated him.

Lon sang another round of “Buffalo Gals” while
Rick was pulling on his socks and his shoes. He reached for his flannel shirt and stumbled outside. The first light was illuminating the red cliffs above camp. “Where we going?” Rick managed.

“You're still asleep. I'll do the driving on the way up. Here, put this on.”

Lon handed him an oversize glove. Rick yawned. “What's this for?”

Lon explained that they were taking the eagle with them, and Rick's forearm was going to be its perch.

Rick was wide-awake now. “You're kidding! You want me to hold the eagle?”

A few minutes later he was seated in the truck with the bald eagle on his left forearm. The eagle's face was just inches from his. “What if she pecks my eye out?”

“You'd be the first.”

Lon had strapped one of the long plastic tubes from behind the tents across the top of the camper shell. Out in front of the truck cab it was supported by a T-shaped bracket attached to the front bumper. Lon was being very mysterious. Rick guessed they were going up onto the plateau to erect an antenna. “So what's this all about?” he asked.

“I need you to drive back down. I don't get to do this except when Josh or some of the others are here, or unless I want to do some serious walking afterward. It's one of the disadvantages to working alone.”

As they crested the grade, Lon turned off the road to
the left and parked on a big patch of slickrock only a hundred feet or so from the edge of the cliff. Rick stood by with the eagle while the biologist unloaded the long plastic tube from the truck. Then Lon pulled out a long, furled bundle of bright red, blue, and white material wrapped around long aluminum tubes.

Wrong about the antenna. “Umbrella?” Rick ventured. “Giant beach umbrella?”

Lon looked up with a quick smile. “Nope. Hang glider.”

“Really? Is it yours?”

“Sure.”

Lon was working fast, unfolding the aluminum members of the glider, attaching guy wires, sliding extremely thin metal ribs into sleeves in the wing.

Rick shivered. The day was only starting to warm up. “You're really going to jump off this cliff?”

“Run off. I haven't had many chances since I got here. I took Josh up a couple of weeks ago in my tandem glider. Andrea's been up too. She works with Josh.”

“You don't expect me to—”

“Don't worry, this is my solo glider. You're gonna drive the truck down to the LZ—the landing zone. Right now you can take Sky over to that bracket on the front of the truck. She'll step off your arm.”

The eagle stepped to the bracket just as Lon had said she would. Sky looked around fiercely, opened her
wings to the wind, the good one and the stub, and started flapping in place.

Lon was walking close to the edge of the cliff. Rick tried to follow but could feel himself hanging back. Lon reached into his back pocket and pulled out a length of neon-green surveying tape. He stepped forward to the very edge, knelt, and tied it to a dead branch on a stunted juniper. “Indicates wind direction,” he explained. “I need a good strong wind blowing directly at me. If it's coming from the side—no good.”

The tape fluttered smartly in the wind. “Perfect,” Lon said. “Mornings are excellent this time of year. It only takes an hour or so for the sun to warm up this east-facing cliff. Warm air rises up the cliffs. Until October cools off some more, mornings are best. Once the sun has a chance to cook all this rock out here, it creates thermals strong enough to yank you into heaven.”

Lon pointed below. “See the road running by those buttes?”

“I see it.”

“All together, the buttes are called Standing Rocks, but each one has its own name. Closest to us is the Wall. The huge one, shaped kind of like the Sphinx, is called Lizard Rock for some reason. The Plug's out there past it, then Chimney Rock.”

“Chimney Rock is obvious.”

“Okay, follow the road down to the huge field in
between the sand dunes and the Doll House down at the end of the road.”

“I see the field. I drove all the way to that Doll House when I took off with your truck. It looked more like a bunch of giants to me.”

“The field is my primary LZ. That's where you pick me up—you'll see the flags. I need to land into the wind.”

“One thing I don't understand.”

“Name it.”

“Why did we bring the eagle with us?”

“Oh. Sky's going with me.”

“You're kidding.”

“It's the only way she can fly these days.”

Rick was having a hard time believing all this. First the hang glider, then the eagle…“How long have you been flying hang gliders?”

“Twenty-one years.”

“So it's safe.”

“Depends on the pilot, depends on conditions. The way I look at it, it's safer than driving on a freeway with drunks and homicidal maniacs.”

“Actually,” Rick admitted, “I had a flying dream last night.”

Lon's eyes lit up. “As in…flying like a bird? Tell me about it.”

Rick shrugged. “I was flying with one of your condors. Over the Maze.”

Lon clapped him on the shoulder. “A man after my own heart.”

“Do you ever have flying dreams?”

“All the time, but now they're hang gliding dreams. When I was a kid I would kind of hover with my arms out wide. All the wings I needed were my outstretched arms.”

“Were people always motioning for you to come down?”

“All the time. They thought I was going to crash. They couldn't believe I could really fly.”

“What do those flying dreams mean? Is it an escape fantasy? Is it
dying
, and leaving everybody behind?”

“Heard both of those. I've also heard it's about how we puny humans keep searching for the meaning of life. I've heard just about everything. But I have my own theory: flying dreams signify the desire to fly! Since people have had imaginations, they've envied birds. In their dreams they do something about it! Say, would you put the glove back on and bring Sky?”

Lon darted around to the back of the pickup, fished a duffel bag and a helmet from the camper shell. A minute later he was stepping through the leg straps of a full-body harness and passing his arms through the shoulder straps. The harness was a synthetic cocoon that ran from his shoulders to his feet.

“What's in the big pouch over your chest?” Rick asked.

“Parachute,” Lon replied with a grin.

Delicately the man positioned the eagle inside an intricate harness of her own. Obviously handmade, the harness left the eagle's head, wings, tail, and feet free. Lon proceeded to wrap each of the eagle's talons with adhesive foam strips. “For my protection—she'll kind of be on my back.”

“I don't believe this,” Rick said. He was trying to hold the eagle up by the harness strap. Sky was flapping her enormous wing, ready and anxious to fly. She was too heavy for Rick to hold her up for long. He lowered her gently to the ground until her feet found the slickrock.

Lon slipped on his sunglasses, pulled his helmet over his head. It had wraparound jaw protection that momentarily pushed his beard in the wrong direction.

“Hook in,” Rick heard the man remind himself. Lon reached over his shoulder and attached his harness, with a carabiner, to the keel of the hang glider above.

“Hook Sky,” Lon said. Rick reached in with the bird under the leading edge of the wing. Lon had a carabiner waiting and hooked her in. He screwed the carabiner's locking mechanism down tight.

The man studied the green tape waving in the wind at the edge of the cliff. He took a deep breath, pulled on gloves, then lifted the glider by the two shiny aluminum tubes descending from a common point above him where they were attached to the keel. A thinner bar
connected them horizontally, forming a triangle. A small instrument box was attached to the horizontal bar.

There was so much Rick wanted to ask, but this wasn't the time. “Have a good one,” he said.

“Thanks.”

Rick thought Lon was set to go, but then the man set the glider down on the tiny wheels at the ends of its horizontal bar. “I left the two-way radio in the truck tuned to the frequency of the receiver built into my helmet. All you have to do is push the talk button on the side of the mike when you want to talk.”

“Where's yours?”

“On my glove finger here. I can hit it with my thumb. See this wire running up my neck? See where it's jacked into the helmet? I'll let you know if I change my mind about my LZ. You let me know if there's any breaking news back on earth. Stand back, Rick, nice and clear.”

Rick walked halfway to the edge of the cliff and stepped away from the runway. He wanted a good look at this.

Lon lifted the glider once again. “
Clear!
” he yelled, and began to jog behind the aluminum triangle.

Rick saw the exact moment of liftoff. Lon's churning legs suddenly left the ground, and he quickly dropped his hands from the near-vertical members of the triangle to the horizontal bar connecting them below. Almost simultaneously he kicked his feet into the bottom of the harness bag and assumed a perfectly prone position. The
eagle was perched on his back with her one wing held out and carving the wind.

Lon flew out from the cliff and then up, up, in great spiraling circles. Rick could see him controlling the glider by shifting his weight from side to side or forward and back.

Rick heard the eagle scream. “Unbelievable,” he said under his breath, and then he cheered, and cheered again at the top of his lungs.

He'd never seen anything so beautiful in his life as this man-kite soaring untethered above the canyonlands. He realized there were tears streaming down his face.

A few minutes later he was back in the truck. Through the windshield, he still had the glider in sight. Several ravens were performing acrobatic maneuvers very close to the glider.

Rick switched on the two-way, picked up the mike, and hit the talk button. “Lon and Sky,” he said, “do you read me? Over…”

He let his thumb off the button.

“Ten-four. Read you loud and clear. What's up? Over…”

“You are. What's the deal with the ravens off your starboard wing? Over…”

“Those guys? Just a couple of local pilots.”