They dragged the bargain-bin hang glider up the rocky slope, laughing harder with every failed launch. At eighteen, confidence came cheap—unlike the glider, which looked like it might fold in half if you stared at it wrong.

“Last try,” Jim said, though he’d said it five times already as did Dan.

The wind shifted.

This time, when Jim took off, the frame didn’t dip—it lifted.

Suddenly, the ground was gone.

For five long minutes, the world dropped away beneath them: trees shrinking, rocks blurring, the valley yawning open like a mouth. The glider creaked with every gust. Their laughter turned into tight, breathless silence.  Jim is thinking

“Dude… I am actually flying.”

“Dude… I might die.”

A violent dip sent Jim’s stomach somewhere above his head. Jim whooped—half terror, half thrill—while Dan watched Jim clinging on to the bar, eyes wide, praying to a God he hadn’t thought about in years.  Thinking he might have just got his best friend killed.

Then, as abruptly as it began, the wind eased. The glider stumbled back toward earth, skidding across dirt and grass until he landed like a pro in a 10,000 elite kite. 

Jim lay there, stunned and soiled from the inside but then 

The both of them burst out laughing—wild, unstoppable, a little hysterical. Hearing each other even the flight distance took them far abart.  Dan now beliving Jim’s trip must be repeated by him as the landing was so smooth Jim must have had a thrill of a lifetime.  Once together before a word could be spoken Dan realized his instinct of eminent was even more right on then had thought for those few minuts of flight.  As speach starts to return the two crazy boys find themselves halfway home in Dan’s barely drivable    Toyota Corolla, all windows all the way down.

Five minutes in the air.

Long enough to feel infinite.  Short enough to realize for the third time in this young man’s life God is keeping him around for something.