Calmly spinning, I scan as far away as I can see. The last rays of the day's sun warm my back and my stare locks onto my own shadow. I follow the lines of my body on the stone in front of me, spreading my arms as wings, and bathe in the beauty of existence.

The moment before I jump is filled with anxiety and what-ifs. But then as soon as I enter the air, I'm filled with this calmness and that's the main attraction to it. That's why I do these death-consequence pursuits or arts.

It's kind of strange to be a free soloist when you know so much about flying, because I'm playing two opposite games, or practicing two polar opposite arts. One is the art of not falling. The other one is flying. With both those things spinning in my mind, there's a lot to process and it's pretty mind-boggling.

The most beautiful experiences I've had climbing are when everything is simplified. Free soloing is the simplest thing, until you learn to fly or to walk on air - which I feel is all possible.

It's one of the most fundamental desires of man, of being free and flying unhindered, and it really seems to go a lot with our founding fathers' principles of freedom.

Each time I saw a cliff, I wondered whether I could free solo it. My life shaped itself around the understanding that falling means I die. To break the paradigm I had to empty out my essence, rummaging for fundamentals I thought were gone forever.

A lot of people confuse free climbing with free solo. Free climbing is when we use ropes, but we only make upward progress with our bodies.