Is Skydiving the Most Physiologically Rewarding Form of Travel?

“Get Out There” is a column for itchy footed humans written by long-time Paste contributor Blake Snow. Although different now, travel is better than ever. Today we go skydiving.

Well, I did it again. After first skydiving (and not dying) for Paste seven years ago, my daughter asked if I’d go again for her 18th birthday. “A hundred percent,” I replied. I was proud of her bravery and sense of adventure. 

But I also wanted her to experience the yin and yang of jumping from a perfectly good airplane. As I wrote before, “The most remarkable thing about skydiving is its disorienting and forceful sense of violence, peace, death, and life.” Freefall is one of the most intense things you’ll ever experience, both mentally and physically. But the parachute ride to the ground is contradictingly one of the most calming and reassuring things you’ll ever experience. 

I wanted my daughter to feel that first-hand—the tremendous weight of dropping at 200 miles per hour, followed by the enormous energy and uplift of surviving the encounter. After my first jump, I felt like I could run a marathon, I was so invigorated.

So my daughter and I booked two tandem jumps from Skydive The Wasatch, the highest-rated drop zone in Utah. With the surrounding mountains turning red, orange, and yellow, we were scheduled to jump just before sunset on a golden autumn afternoon. 

But something strange happened in the weeks and days leading up to the jump: I got nervous, which is a perfectly rational thing for any sane human to do before freefalling from a high-flying airplane. But this was new for me as I didn’t think twice, nor worry a wink the first time I skydived. 

There are two reasons for this: First, I’m typically “up for anything” when it comes to hurling my body in new directions and traveling the world. Second, I trust the data which shows that skydiving has a much higher survival rate than driving a car. Those are odds I can live with. 

Nevertheless, I got nervous this time. Then I said something I’ve never said before, which scared me even more: “I’m too old for this.” 

I was probably more scared by that thought than the statistically irrational but understandable fear of skydiving. “Old people say that,” I immediately caught myself. “Am I old now? And if so, does that mean I can’t take as many risks as I used to?”

I found my answer a few days before our scheduled jump. Her name is Dorothy Hoffner of Chicago, who, at 104-years old, recently became the oldest person in the world to skydive. She left her walker on the ground before boarding the plane! She shouted “Let’s go!” before making the 25 minute climb to jumping altitude. After safe landing, she told reporters, “Age is just a number.”

If that’s not the most badass thing I’ve ever heard, I don’t know what is. If you need more proof, just look at Dorothy’s big smile as gravity and wind contort her adorable face during her record-setting dive. (Coincidentally, she died a few days later of natural causes.)

As Dorothy definitely proved, I wasn’t too old to skydive again. Age is just a number. You, I—we can take risks for as long as we live. 

So when my daughter and I arrived at the drop zone a few days later, my fear was gone. My daughter was still a little nervous, which again is perfectly normal. But she wasn’t freaking out. After hitching ourselves to the dive guides like conjoined twins, we boarded the small prop plane and took to the open blue sky, silver clouds flanking us to the west.

When the moment came, we jumped. We screamed. We smiled for the GoPro. We savored the live-saving parachute. We hugged and laughed and sighed with relief after making it back to Earth. We bonded as father and daughter. 

For most people, travel is a positive means of escaping the daily routine of work, chores, and sometimes the people in between. But “travel” is at its most powerful when it moves us in physical and mental ways. And I can’t think of anything more dramatic, moving, and antagonistic to the body and soul than skydiving. 

Have a nice jump!

Blake Snow contributes to fancy publications and Fortune 500 companies as a bodacious writer-for-hire and frequent travel columnist. He lives in Provo, Utah with his adolescent family and two dogs.