Time
Four years into base, I’m beginning to understand how air and wind are like water–but they are invisible. Base jumping in Moab, done the way I choose to do it, is almost completely about understanding the air and wind conditions of the place you are going, rather than the place you are in the moment. So you have to learn the ways of understanding something that can’t be seen. Like the intimate understanding of snow and ice needed to move safely in the mountains, this takes years to learn. Likewise, this knowledge is what can allow you to move in wild places in a sustainable way because you can make intelligent decisions about where you choose to be and when.
I’ve been fascinated for some years with time and its elasticity. It’s on the one hand the most concrete form of measurement, but human perception makes it highly fluid and changeable. Two seconds can feel as short as two milliseconds, or as long as two hours. And vice versa. In some ways, time seems to me to act a lot like water. Like air, it is invisible. Perhaps, in some confusing way, air is like time…
RealTime from steph davis on Vimeo.
Thanks for these thoughts. Those ones about making intelligent decisions about where we choose to be and when are profound…oh…oops, I must have forgotten, this is just about base jumping and climbing:)
Stay Safe
Dave
Time—it has been a major topic within my PhD focus in philosophy of science…time is what we make it to be because it does not exist, only in our perceptive thoughts as a way to understand the reality of which we also create via our (mis)perceptions. Control your perceptions and you may experience a control of time as well and it is in this zone that a human can do the most amazing feats…is that “the zone” or enlightenment…not sure but civilizations from all of our history have had figures, beliefs, and practices that may unlock many mysteries of our current “worldly” perceptions. Ah, yes, TIME.
Richard
Time is certainly not a fixed concept measured in minutes and seconds, at least as it applies to us humans. When you jump time expands as your focus intensifies I;m certain. I’m not a base jumper, but I remember from my days driving open wheeled race cars that when wheel to wheel at 140mph there was all the time in the world, and details as small as a pebble on the track came into view when they would ordinarily be invisible.
There is definitely something to say about “Focus.” You notice all the little things, but when you are going 140mph a pebble can either be benign or the beginning of a very bad day.
I think that time is fixed in our minds as minutes and seconds, however the perception of those minutes and seconds changes, the faster we go the longer the space gets for those seconds. Our perception of those seconds and minutes have now changed.
And perception is so impossible to pin down.