Hang gliding can grant new perspective on the world, your life.

Lots of people dream of flying like a bird, but Lisa Tate has made that dream come true for 32 years. She’s one of thousands who’ve taken to hang gliding since the sport’s inception in the 1970s.

Growing up in Missoula, Mt., Tate, now president of the U.S. Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association (USHPA), used to ride horses on a hill near her home, a hill that also served as the take-off point for local hang-gliding pilots.

“I’d seen hang gliders in the air, but never up close,” Tate, now 46, recalls. “I was riding on the hill one day and looked up and saw a pilot 50 feet overhead – he waved at me. I’d always had that dream of flying like a bird, and I thought, ‘I’m going to do this.’”

In the late 70s, that was easier said than done, since hang gliding was still a new sport at the time with very few practitioners compared to today.

“I fooled around on my own a while, but found I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I decided to go to a real hang-gliding school,” Tate says.

That didn’t work out at first, since she was young enough at the time to need her parents’ permission for instruction in the sport. Though Tate already was into intense outdoor activities such as skiing and climbing, her parents thought hang gliding was too dangerous to give their consent. But when she got old enough to make the call herself, Tate never looked back.

Now a glass-blowing artist in Boise, Idaho, Tate also spends the equivalent of a full-time job in her volunteer position as USHPA president. That’s okay, though, because hang gliding is her passion, and she enjoys the opportunity the organization gives to let her help share the sport with others.

More Brain Than Brawn

Attitudes toward hang gliding have changed a lot since Tate’s parents turned her down for lessons. Do others ask if she’s crazy when they find out she’s an avid hang glider?

“Up until 10 years ago I used to get that question a lot, but I don’t hear it so much anymore,” Tate says. “In the ‘70s, it was still a fairly dangerous activity – a lot of homemade gliders, not a lot of instruction. Now there are much stronger standards for safety and instruction.

“Hang gliding is not a daredevil activity; it’s a legitimate form of aviation.”

There are risks, of course, but Tate insists that properly trained practitioners who play by the rules recognize their experience level and don’t gamble with weather can expect more thrills than spills.

“It’s a very cerebral activity – you must have complete concentration on what’s going on around you,” she says. "It’s not a physically demanding sport, more of a mental game.

“It’s also the closest thing possible to flying like a bird. You’re not in a cockpit – you’re out in the air and you can feel and hear the wind in your face. Birds might fly right next to you.”

Speaking of birds, Tate also noted that hang gliding blends with – rather than intrudes upon – nature.

“Animals aren’t threatened by a hang glider, they’re just curious about it,” she says, recalling an instance of one fellow pilot who was rising on a thermal past a group of big horn sheep on a cliff side in Idaho. “The sheep didn’t scatter, they just looked at the hang glider.”

Freedom of the Skies

Should you decide to give hang gliding a try – and stick with it – don’t be surprised if it changes your life.

“Pilots I know say ‘There was life before hang gliding, and life after hang gliding,’” Tate says. “It’s such a powerful experience – your life changes, and you can’t go back to looking at things the way you did before.”

Like many sensory-rich pursuits, it’s hard to explain the feeling to those who haven’t experienced it before.

“You have to live in the moment, and your focus is total,” Tate says of hang gliding. “You don’t just look at the world from a different perspective, you look at life from a different perspective once you’re into it.

“Hang gliding doesn’t make me feel superior to other people – it just makes me feel I know a secret that those who haven’t done it don’t know.”