How Do You Fly A Kite?

We went to the beach late in the day. The sand was warm. The sun was low. We bought a kite. So naturally I wanted to fly it.

The wind was strong and the kite was small, so the wind blew it spinning in circles until it came crashing down onto the sand. "It needs a tail," I thought, "to balance it in the wind." So I attached long strips of fabric to its base and then sent it upward again. Up, up into the wind. It spun and looped and whirled about, but this time a bit more slowly. It made some circles with growing speed and then quickly slammed into the sand.

Kites need wind right? Or else you have to run, flailing your arms, trying to throw them into the air. Sometimes a kite will never take off, simply because there is no wind. There's nothing wrong with that kite. But that was not the case this day. There was enough wind, perhaps too much wind. Yet the wind kept throwing it to the ground. So how do you fly a kite, especially when the wind is strong?

I looked around to find something to balance this small but sturdy kite. A rock? Too heavy. A stick, not quite. "Goggles?" I thought. Not exactly what I had in mind, but why not.

I tied a pair of goggles to the end of the tail and then threw it upward again. The kite caught the wind and soared aloft. Up, up, up… And then…sideways, and up…and down. I pulled the line. I ran across the sand. I tried to straighten the whole thing up and fly this kite in the strong wind. But as firmly as I tugged, and as quickly as I ran, the kite swooped down. It hit hard.

Is it broken? No. Whew! Okay. What else is there we can try? What else will help this kite to fly? Goggles? Done that. But there's another pair right there. What about more goggles? A little more weight to keep the tail down and the head up? Alright. I guess more goggles it is.

So up went another pair of goggles. Up went the kite with the tail trailing behind. Up, up, up it went. And then it went up even further. The kite reached the end of its line, and then it sat there floating, high up on the wind, poised, balanced, still. 

I sat there and stared up at it for a while.  I was calm.  It sat up there staring out to sea. It too was calm.  I could feel it pull gently on my arm, wanting to go higher and higher. It had hit the sand so many times, frenzied, dizzy and thrashed. It had been out of control. But there we sat, me on the beach and it in the sky. As it floated up so high, I knew it could see far, over land and water.  And through it I could somehow see far too.  Again, it tugged at my arm.  It wanted to soar even higher. So did I.