Quit Flapping and Ride Your Thermals

This is an excerpt from a great article by...Dewitt Jones

.....Wait, it’s not an apparition, it’s real. A Frigate bird, huge with black wings motionless, rising like a Harrier jet straight up from below the cliff edge, levitating into my vision and consciousness. For one breathless moment his gaze meets my own. Then the wind sweeps him higher. Another takes his place, then another, and another until eleven have soared past me. All in silence. All without a beat of their wings. All without effort, rising on the invisible turbulence beneath them.

Higher and higher they soar on that indiscernible funnel of air. Did I say indiscernible? Not for them. I watch the subtle movements of their wings. Never a full stroke, simply tiny adjustments to bring them back to the place of maximum lift. Higher and higher… without struggle.

Finally they are just sable specks among the clouds. Then as if to some inaudible command, they trim their wings, break their upward spiral, and set a course for the island of Oahu some 40 miles distant. It’s clear they’ll make it without a single wing beat.

I am thunderstruck. I fall into the grass with a force that reminds me only too clearly that I do not have wings. I sit staring into the sky where the birds have been. It was much too powerful not to have meaning. Slowly words coalesce in my head, words that make me smile, “Quit your flapping and ride your thermals!”

Oh, how true!

Read the full article here.......Dewitt Jones