I have a strong feeling for it, and I think us as humans perceive all of that - the pressure change and the moon and the wind and whether a storm is moving in on us - if we just are close enough to nature.

I was taking my advance freefall course, doing my level 1 jump. My heart was racing. Like I said, I have a lot of fear with falling, so I panicked. Then I let go of the door of the airplane and kind of panicked the entire way. But after a few jumps I grew more calm, realized what was going on, and I think that was the key. The more calm I got, the more relaxed I was.

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.

I have a strong feeling for it, and I think us as humans perceive all of that - the pressure change and the moon and the wind and whether a storm is moving in on us - if we just are close enough to nature.

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.

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.

We who walk the narrow line have stood for free thinking for thousands of years. Let us continue balancing within the world as we try to understand the space between.