Manuk shortly after takeoff in Ellenville

Leonardo da Vinci conceived designs for the parachute and the helicopter in the late 1400s before focusing on glider wings as the best chance at realizing human flight. The dream of human-powered flight has flourished, and advances over the past 30 years in hang gliding have allowed it to evolve from a literally "killer sport"—when pilots built their own backyard gliders from bamboo, duct tape, and plastic, thanks to designs published in Popular Mechanics—into a relatively safe hobby, with its own governing and regulatory body, US Hang Gliders Association.

Ellenville, a town nestled against the Shawangunk Ridge in the Rondout Valley, has been a hotbed of flying activity since the early '70s. Greg Black is owner of Mountain Wings Flying School and E-Ville Outfitters, located in the center of town on Liberty Street. Born and raised in Ellenville, Black is a master-rated hang-glider pilot with over 25 years' experience. Kayaks, hang gliders, paragliders, and paramotors (motorized paragliders) fill his jumbled store. An intense man with a passion for extreme thrills (other hobbies include racing motorcycles and stunt-flying planes), Black is a straightforward teacher. The first hang gliding lesson a student receives from Black involves leaning basic concepts at the store, watching some videos, and then strapping into the hang-glider simulator—a harness ingeniously rigged to a Nintendo hang-glider game.

Later, I chatted with "Driver Dan" Rogers of Westchester and Manuk of Ellenville, as they assembled their gliders at the Ellenville launch site, a precipitously sloped grassy ledge off of Route 52 overlooking the valley below, owned by Tony Cavelli, an important and colorful figure in the local hang gliding scene. Rogers said, "[Hang gliding] is not something you can do every once in a while. You have to keep your skills up. Today the cloud development tells me that there is a lot of thermal activity, so what we do is go out there and look for columns of rising air and try to circle in it and gain lift." (Thermals are warm columns of air that spiral up from the earth's surface into the atmosphere when the ground heats up, propelling gliders skyward.) Over the radio, Carlos, a pilot already in the air, excitedly announced that there was a thermal right over the launch area. As we looked up we could see three gliders getting smaller and smaller, climbing in wide clockwise spirals. Rogers and Manuk were soon aloft.

Paul Voight and son Ryan, 1988. Photo taken from wing-mounted camera.

Hang-glider pilots generally fall into two categories: freestyle and cross-country. Freestyle pilots catch thermals, fly around in the general vicinity of where they launched from, and touch down at the landing zone (LZ) below where they took off. Cross-country pilots always try to land as far away from the launch site as possible, searching for thermals to keep them aloft. The world cross-country distance record was set in 2002 by Mike Barber, who flew 437 miles from his launch site. The Ellenville record is 141 miles to Rhode Island; and in 1989 T.J. Young traveled 57 miles from Ellenville to land in Central Park. This year, on the first week in June, Tom Nejame traveled 107 miles from Ellenville to Coventry, Connecticut.

John Bilsky is a high school science teacher from Scranton, Pennsylvania and president of the Ellenville-based Southern New York Hang Glider Pilots Association. Asked to describe his favorite apect of flying Bilsky responded, "Soaring on thermals. It's the purest form of aviation, and unless you have done it, there is really no way of explaining how much fun it is.... And to have an eagle off your wingtip, it's very special."

Lawn art by Roger Baker at the landing zone

Paul Voight, owner of Fly High Hang Gliding, another of the major hang gliding schools and retailers, is a master pilot who took his first flight in 1972 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He moved to the area in 1977. "The fun still hasn't stopped," he said. Asked what his favorite thing about flying is, he replied, "My favorite thing about flying now is flying with my son. He's 20 now and he is a very good pilot. He started flying with me when he was four, and for his 10th birthday, found a glider in the garage with his name on it."

The Ellenville site, due to the high volume of launches, is one of the safest sites in the country. There have been five deaths in over 30 years of flying—four hang gliders and one paraglider. On a tragic note, the most recent death happened during Memorial Day weekend when paraglider Scott McHattie's chute collapsed at about 90 feet in the air, too close for the back-up to deploy. Before that, it had been almost 10 years since a fatality. "I have never hurt myself in 32 years of hang gliding," Voight said. "I've hurt myself worse skiing and playing hockey. And I certainly wouldn't let my son do it if it was dangerous. Today it's as safe as your decision- making process."

Several hang gliders expressed reservations about paragliding and the lack of a rigid airfoil, and there is something of a skier/snowboarder rivalry between the two. (Paragliders share the Ellenville air and launch/landing sites with hang gliders.) Paragliding is more popular in Europe than in the US, as it was invented in the '80s as a quick way down out of the Alps for mountaineers. The sport attracts more thrill seekers than hang gliding; hang gliders tending toward the more traditionalist end of the spectrum.

Jonathan D. King trying to inflate a paraglider

Curious about both mediums of flight, I took a paragliding lesson with Alistair Ritchie and Alec Gordon, instructors who work out of Black's store. Ritchie and Gordon took me to a Kerhonkson training hill to learn to fly. After a series of runs back and forth across a field pulling what felt like an ox yoke leaning to inflate the wing, I was able to move up the hill, and by the end of the day had nibbled my first exhilarating taste of flight—reaching about 10 feet in the air for five seconds. Bruised and exhausted, I wanted more.

I came back the next week for my hang gliding lesson with Black, and as he assembled the glider he stressed two important things—stay relaxed and look where you are going. Another tip that turned out to be very useful was to imagine pushing a shopping cart loaded with 100 pounds of groceries, because a glider steers in exactly the same way. Before I knew it, I had the glider on my shoulders and was running down the hill as fast as I could. Modern hang gliders are designed to fly effortlessly. Once I achieved the proper speed I felt my feet lifting off the ground as the glider yoked me into the air. All I could do was hoot as I achieved my second flight in as many weeks. Over the day I learned how to steer, how to stay relaxed (not easy), and most importantly how to land properly on my feet with a "flair," by pushing up on the bar. Having tried both paragliding and hang gliding (it's called being bi-wingual), I thoroughly enjoyed both lessons, although I felt hang gliding was a bit easier to pick up. Back on the ground, I found myself gazing up and thinking of what da Vinci wrote: "When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."