Queenstown, New Zealand is the adventure capitol of Planet Earth. No other place has such a variety of thrills awaiting the intrepid traveller seeking excitement and adrenalin-pumping experiences. Skydiving is just one among the array of opportunities awaiting: hang gliding, paragliding, jet skiing, speed boating, canyoneering, mountaineering, whitewater rafting, ATV vehicles and hiking all were on the menu.

My schedule for the first day in Queenstown called for me to go skydiving, but high winds caused that particular engagement to be cancelled. After a few phone calls with my travel planner, she had made arrangements for what I thought was going to be a hang gliding trip. I had a mere 20 minutes to rush from the pick-up point.

When we arrived at the launch point, Coronet Peak, I learned that I would be paragliding instead of hang gliding. I was not disappointed. Even though I had never been hang gliding and had hoped to cross that item off my bucket list, I never had been paragliding either, another item on my bucket list, albeit not as high as hang gliding.

Final prepping at Coronet Peak. In moments, we were going to go running off the cliff behind us.

The trip was glorious. I was not disappointed in the least, as the video shows my obvious delight throughout. Indeed, it became a lesson in how unexpected apparent disasters lead to preferable outcomes. We soared over a thousand feet into the air with the parasail, while I watched a hang glider struggling to find height far, far below us.

As the video shows, I literally had a front row seat, the ultimate "shotgun" seat. Flying went from something I could do only in my dreams to something I actually experienced.

The psychologist Abraham Maslow, most well-known for developing the hierarchy of needs, has written about "peak experiences" occurring to those who have reached the level of self-actualization. He described it as "rare, exciting, oceanic, deeply moving, exhilarating, elevating experiences that generate an advanced form of perceiving reality, and are even mystic and magical in their effect."

I had no doubt I was having a peak experience, although it would be more precise to say I was in a state of flow as described by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, These thoughts occurred to me only as I reflected on the experience after it was over, because an essential element of both peak experiences and flow is not intellectualization of the experience but, rather, a total immersion, a state of absolute being in the moment.

Csíkszentmihályi notes that six elements characterize the flow state: (1) intense and focused concentration on the present moment; (2) merging of action and awareness; (3) a loss of reflective self-consciousness; (4) a sense of personal control or agency; (5) alteration in subjective experience of time; and (6) experience of activity as intrinsically rewarding. Not only was I flying, I was flowing!

Come fly with me!

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Last revised: August 8, 2015.