A LIFE LIVED ON THE EDGE
In January, in one of his final long-form interviews, extreme athlete Dean S. Potter told the National Post’s Joe O’Connor he feared dying while performing a stunt. And that’s exactly what happened when he perished during a failed wingsuit flight. Potter
Q How did you get into extreme risks, were you doing nutty stuff, even as a kid?
A I was living in Israel. My dad was in the UN for three years. ... We lived in a rock house surrounded by almond trees, and I would climb the stone house to pick the almonds. One day I fell and landed hard on the cement, with my head ... and I can remember how, before I fell, climbing it used to horrify me. But after I fell, I remember going up there and, even as a kid, I can remember not having any fear.
Q Tell me more about wingsuiting, how do you decide where to jump, and when?
A I get to the exit point and I stand there, and calculate if this is a good spot to jump. ... Intuition is very high, and then you click to a different brain that is almost more intellectual. We throw rocks and count how long it takes to land. We also have lasers that we shoot down the rock wall that measure the distance and angle, so we back up our intuition with facts.
Q And then?
A There is a lot of technique in getting the wingsuit and yourself to fly in 4.5 seconds. You are observing everything, the wind coming up the wall, and I look at a point about 35 degrees in front of me, down on the ground, and to fly forward you have to point yourself toward the ground. The way to fly is to gain downward momentum to generate lift, and so you look at the point that you are going to hit — in 4.5 seconds — if you mess up. And it is a beautiful thing — within two seconds, the suit inflates — you feel the lift and your body totally relaxes and you are away from danger. You’re flying.
Q What is that sensation like?
A At this point, you are going 100 miles an hour forward, and even though we are going that fast — the visuals of it are in slow motion, almost. ... You are engaged in beauty, and the thing that really heightens the awareness even beyond the danger is the beauty.
Q Are you an addict?
A I have seen many of my friends die because they needed it. They couldn’t live without it. ... I do all these extreme things, but I am also the one to know to go for a dog walk if my intuition is telling me that today is not the right day. I am 42 now. I try to be more balanced.
Q How do you keep going?
A In some ways, I am haunted, and I have the thoughts of my many, many friends who have passed. ... As sad as it is to lose somebody, and it is devastating but, for instance, every death has a lesson. And, for instance, Sean Leary, and Sean was my best, best wingsuiting buddy and climbing partner, and we did everything together. But we could always recognize his faults, and what ultimately killed him. He was always in a hurry. ... And what I learned from Sean was: don’t be in a hurry.
Q You’ve had brushes with death yourself, right?
A BASE jumping, early on, in the early 2000s, and I had this plan to BASE-jump the Pit of the Swallows in Mexico. ... I am doing some practice jumps and I have a parachute malfunction, and this is a 1,200-foot pit. ... The one rule I have is to never go to the max. I always hold myself back some, so I am not at the edge of life and death.
Q How has getting older changed you?
A As I have gotten older, I do see that other things make me feel good. I like to garden. And I like to have little plants in my house. I like to work on my house. I love to walk the dog, prune the trees, to do these more grounding things that, lately, turn me on. And I am getting older. My hair is actually turning grey. I have this streak of grey in this hair. Part of me wants me to comb it over so people don’t see the grey, but other times I think, “Wow, this is success. I am getting older. I have lived through a lot.”