Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Day 6: The Perfect Day


More snow in the night and picture perfect blue skies with the sun slowly climbing round the mountain. So achingly beautiful is this sight, I quickly pull on my boots. Off I crump into the knee-high snow through the woods and up the meadows to the abandoned cow shed, where I sit awhile to gaze in wonder at the Narnia stretched out before me.


Back in time for a late lunch before heading off with Alain up the mountain on our skis where he takes me to a high point way above the pods. There, we harness up to his paraglide before ski-ing off the edge and soaring high. I have no fear as I know I am in the safest hands - Alain has not only successfully taken a blind man paragliding, he has talked him through his descent from Mont Blanc and is the inventor of the first paraglide harness seat for paraplegics. So, I reckon, he knows what he is doing.

Ah! But this is utterly fantastic, and I laugh with the sheer exhilaration of the initial lift-off. So this is what it is like to fly like a bird - and the silence, the stillness, then whoop we dip and twist and play acrobatics with the air currents, before eventually coming to a gentle landing in a field in the valley. I feel a heightened sense of being alive and am elated, my heart beating hard, wanting to repeat the experience all over again.

But no time, evening will soon be drawing in, promising a remarkable sunset, and after dinner it is proposed we go skiing in the light of the full moon. A perfect day indeed...

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