Via Iter Verba #2- Dance With Death

There are moments when you realize you are on the fringe of death.

The most serious for me was probably when I was 18, and smoked something that was laced. I had laid there in bed, fading in and out of sleep, people telling me my face had looked yellow, and that I appeared as a zombie. A mentor told me he thought I might die in my sleep. Other times exist too. Once I had been speeding 120MPH down a highway in an old champagne car, a rickety little thing with mechanical issues too. I was racing back home after a solo road trip, having seen Seattle, Portland, and all the cities in between for the very first time. I remember during that highspeed pursuit of myself, one passed car actually flashed his blinkers at me, bright things in the distance behind a warped, purple-tinted back window, and I had a brief moment of self reflection, slowing down a tad.

On November 3rd 2024, I took another dance with death. At 13,000 feet in the air, I jumped out of a moving plane.

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Let me back track.

Me, on my college campus, walking over a bridge, going up the side of a 4, 5, or 6 story building, looking below and holding an intense fear of falling. Something ate at the edges of my mind that wasn’t me. A parasite that annoyed. It sunk my stomach like it was a boulder, just walking across a little bridge. “I’m starting to develop a fear of heights”.

I’m not the kind of person to be controlled by any outside source. I don’t tolerate addiction for myself. And until now, I didn’t think I tolerated fear. “I’m going skydiving” I said. “This summer.”

In Spring, everyone cool person I met, especially cute girls, I extended an invitation to. If they wanted to join me skydiving. Half a joke, half wanting a partner in crime, I continued on believing I would do it.

But at the end of Summer, I realized I had gotten a good job, had gotten busy with finishing the last edits of my novel, and had started my “querying” process. The moment I realized Summer was ending, I paid for my skydiving venture online. And I only redeemed my ticket once I saw the expiration date was 2 weeks away.

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My legs shook for 15 minutes waiting for our group’s turn to harness up. Before this, I asked a few questions regarding additional safety measures that were in place, to which I was referred to the head huncho of the operation. I learned that the secondary emergency parachute has to be specifically packed by a trained professional of the FAA. However, I also learned that this business was unwilling to give me recent “incident reports”. All I had was this man’s words, that there hadn’t been an incident in a “few years”. I did my research, I saw a plane crash with this organization in 2020. At this location. Another incident less than 6 months later, specifically on a woman’s parachute malfunctioning.

All of this in my head, I went up anyway. And jumped out of a moving plane.

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It was hard to breath on the free fall. Wind rushes into you at insane speeds, your ears whistle, and hurt. You have to remind yourself to keep your feet up while falling, you’re supposed to lift up your head the whole free fall. I kept my eyes on the small images below me, the rolling hills and the tiny houses in the distance (probably why I felt sick after, keeping your head up helps the brain orientate itself more clearly).

Adrenaline rushes into you. You spread out your arms, like a bird, and you are hurtling towards the Earth. There is always a risk your parachute does not open. You have to consciously breathe in the wind that assaults your face. Wrinkles spread over your cheeks.

And finally, the parachute is deployed, and your momentum smooths out. Your harness digs into your body, a jolt. You begin to drift across the sky. You catch your breath, appreciate the miniature world before you, and the ocean in the distance. A very grand world, and you are able to see much more of it from up here.

Before you know it, you touch ground. And as one woman said, as the bus back to the compound stopped, “back to our boring lives.”

“Just skydive every weekend.” I tell her. Reminding me of my own agency through her.

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Thanks for reading,

~Erickson

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Welcome to Via Iter Verba – a collection of journal entries revolving around adventures in “Van Life”. From the day-to-day, to the grand adventures, to the emotions, Via Iter Verba seeks to speak on the unconventionalities of such a lifestyle, and unleash them to you, the audience. Have you ever considered “Van Life”, add to the discussion below!