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Jake stood on the small footbridge in the park and stared down into the water. As he watched the little minnows swimming to-and-fro between the banks of the creek he thought, “Boy, it would sure be neat if I could swim around underwater like that. If I never had to come up for air.”
On his way home, Jake stopped and watched a bird hopping from branch to branch in a small tree beside the path. After just a minute, the bird leaped into the air and flew away. Jake watched the bird as it got smaller and smaller until it was just a speck in the sky, and then disappeared. It was amazing. “Boy,” said Jake, “I wish I could fly. I wonder how birds do it.” He watched every bird he saw on the way home and thought, “It must be all the flapping.” Every bird he had seen flapped and flapped and flapped as it flew.”
The next day, Jake went back to the park. Every bird he saw there flapped and flapped as it flew. The sparrows flapped. The ducks flapped. The geese flapped. All the birds flapped. Jake flapped. He flapped and flapped and flapped. And he ran around. Jake ran around flapping his arms as hard and as fast as he could. Jake got very tired, but he didn’t fly.
Jake flapped and ran so much and got so tired that he collapsed on his back in the grass to catch his breath. He lay there and looked at the sky. Suddenly, out of the blue came a big, graceful hawk. The hawk didn’t flap. The hawk flew in lazy, graceful circles without flapping once. He flew five or six circles before gliding away. Again Jake was amazed, but now he knew – You can fly without flapping.
Jake stood up again and thought about the hawk and how it had flown by. It just stretched its wings out to the sides and that was it. Jake didn’t think that it would work for him, but it was worth a try. Jake stretched his arms out to the sides and waited. He didn’t fly. The hawk had been moving though, not standing still. Maybe that was the problem. Jake kept his arms out and ran and ran and ran around in circles. Jake got very tired, but he didn’t fly.
Jake ran and ran and ran in circles and got so tired that he collapsed in the grass again and looked at the sky. The sky was a beautiful blue. While Jake lay on his back watching the sky, something else flew by. A cloud. A big, puffy, white cloud flew by, drifting slowly. “So many things can fly,” thought Jake. He was jealous. Jake really wanted to fly.
The next morning, Jake stretched out on his back in the yard behind his house and watched the sky. Birds flew by, flapping. Hawks flew by, not flapping. Jake decided that it must be the wings. Birds fly. Birds have wings. Wings help birds fly. But clouds flew by too. Clouds don’t have wings. So, it must be possible to fly, even without wings. One cloud flew by that looked like a train. One looked like a hippo. One looked a bit like a little boy. “If clouds can fly that look like little boys,” said Jake, “then it must be that little boys can fly that look like little boys.” Jake was excited. Very excited. “I’m going to fly,” he thought, “But, how?”
Jake sat in his yard, picking grass and watching clouds trying to figure out how they did it. Jake sat there, trying to figure out the secret for a very long time. Finally, he gave up trying to figure it out. It was too frustrating
Jake was feeling sad because he had not figured out how to fly. Often, when Jake is sad, it makes him feel better to play with dandelion puffs. His backyard had lots of little puffy dandelions all over. Jake plucked one out of the ground and blew at the round puff and began to smile when all the little seeds got caught up in the wind. He bent over and plucked up another and another and another. The air was soon full of dandelion wispy seeds. Just then, a breeze picked up and all the dandelion wisps were blown toward the house. Then they rose up and up and up and flew over the house and beyond until Jake couldn’t see them anymore. All he could see was the sky and the clouds that flew slowly by. Suddenly Jake knew the answer.
Because they’re light and fluffy. Clouds, dandelions they can fly because they’re light and fluffy. Jake was very happy to have finally figured out why clouds can fly, but he was sad because little boys are not light and fluffy at all. They are pretty heavy.
But Jake remembered a time when he asked his mother what he should be when he grew up. She said, “You can be anything you want to be. You can do anything if you just put your mind to it.” So Jake sat down again in his back yard and put his mind to it. “I’m going to fly,” he thought. “I’m going to be light and fluffy.”
He sat and he thought, “Light and fluffy. Light and fluffy. Light and fluffy. I’m going to be light and fluffy.” He stood up and jumped. He still felt very heavy. He didn’t fly away on the breeze. His mother had said, “You can do anything if you just put your mind to it.” His father had agreed. It must be true.
Jake sat again and thought harder. “Light and fluffy. Light and fluffy.” When he sat down, it was still morning and the day was just starting to get hot. Jake sat there for a very long time. The sun rose higher and higher. The day got hotter and hotter. But Jake just sat there, putting his mind to it. “Light and fluffy.”
As the day wore on, Jake got tired. The sun began to sink lower in the sky. It began to cool down again. Jake yawned. “Light and fluffy.” Jake yawned again. “I don’t know if this is going to work,” he thought. Jake yawned again and closed his eyes for a moment. “Light and fluffy.” A breeze picked up while Jake had his eyes closed and ruffled his hair. Jake suddenly felt kind of funny. He opened his eyes. What he saw was incredible.
Jake was looking in the second story window of his house. He could see his father sweeping the floor in the bedroom. Jake looked down. He was twelve feet above the ground. Jake was a little scared and a lot excited all at once. It worked.
A gust of wind came and blew Jake up over the roof of his house. “Oh,” said Jake, “there’s my lost ball.” It was stuck up on the roof in the rain gutter. The wind blew Jake higher. He could see all the houses on his street. He could see his friend Sam’s house. He could see Becky’s house. “I think that’s Becky there on her swing set,” said Jake. He waved but she didn’t see him.
Jake rose higher still. He could see the park. The wind was blowing him right toward the park. There was the bridge. There was the huge oak tree. The wind was blowing him right at the big tree. Jake got nearer and nearer to the branches of the tree. He tried to change directions, but he could only go where the wind pushed him. Jake was getting scared. Just before he would have hit the tree, though, a gust of wind picked him up and blew him over the tree’s top. “Phew!”
Jake laughed with delight. A duck flew by and gave Jake a funny look as if to say, “Hey, what are you doing up here?” It said, “Quack!” and flew on by. Meanwhile, the wind was picking up and Jake was going faster. He blew toward his mother’s office and went right past her window. It was the weekend so there was no one there. Jake rose higher and higher and his neighborhood spread out below him like a map. It looked like a miniature model of a town. Cars were smaller even than Jake’s toy cars. He saw people walking along the sidewalks, and they looked like little ants. Wow! How wonderful!
Jake blew right out of town and into the countryside that surrounded it. He saw tiny cows way down below and tiny barns.
Jake was being blown right toward the beautiful mountains. He’d gone for a hike with his father in those mountains and they had been beautiful from the ground. They were even more beautiful from up here. As he got closer, to the mountains, the wind pushed him down a bit lower. He passed just ten feet over the top of the tallest of the mountains. “Hello,” he called down to a mountain goat who was looking up at him. “Maa-a-a-a-a” said the goat.
On the other side of the mountains, the ground sank away quickly to the beaches and the ocean. Jake had gone to the ocean with his parents and played on the beach and swam in the waves and it had been beautiful then, but it was even more beautiful from way up here.
Jake blew right over the beach and over the waves and out to sea. As the land began to get further away, Jake began to get scared. It was almost dinner-time and he was hungry. Also, he had had enough flying. He wanted to be heavy and on the ground again. He’d never been this far away from home before. He’d never been further than just the park by himself. The mountains got smaller and smaller as Jake drifted further and further out to sea. “I want to go home,” yelled Jake. But the wind didn’t listen. It just pushed him further and further out to sea. The land got further and further away. When the land finally disappeared, Jake began to cry. Flying was just not fun anymore. Jake was scared and lonely and hungry. Jake drifted along on the wind and cried. When he ran out of tears, he rubbed his eyes and looked around.
All around him, as far as he could see, there was nothing but water. Nothing. Jake saw a whale below. It was huge. It came up to the surface of the water and spouted a fountain of mist and water. Then it sank below the surface of the sea and disappeared again.
Jake saw a speck away off in the sky. It seemed to be getting closer and it was headed back the way Jake had come, toward land. As it drew nearer, Jake saw that it was a bird. A sea gull. The sea gull wasn’t really paying much attention to where it was going and it flew only a couple of inches above Jake’s head. Jake grabbed at it and caught it by a few tail feathers. The sea gull was not happy about this at all. It turned in the air and tried to peck at Jakes hand. The gull quickly found, however, that it could not peck and fly at the same time. Jake was so light that the gull could fly just fine even with Jake hanging on, so on the bird flew. After a while of flying, Jake and the bird came close enough to the land that Jake could see a dim outline of the mountains. Jake’s heart soared. He couldn’t remember when he had been so happy.
From relief and exhaustion, Jake fell asleep, still holding on to the gull’s tail, just as the sun dipped down below the horizon and lit up the sky in a beautiful sunset. Jake slept and the bird flew on.
When Jake awoke, he was confused. He didn’t know where he was. It was dark too, so he couldn’t see very much either. He seemed to be sitting on the ground and leaning against something. He felt the ground. He was sitting on grassy ground. He noticed, too, as he looked around that there was light spilling from a window above his head and lighting up a square of grass a few yards away.
“I must have fallen asleep,” thought Jake.
He went inside where his mother said, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick.” It was just at this moment that Jake remembered his flying adventure.
“I fell asleep in the backyard.” Said Jake. “I was concentrating really hard on being light and fluffy so that I could fly, and I guess I fell asleep.”
“Where,” Jake’s mother asked, “did you get those feathers?” She pointed at his hand. Jake looked down and there, in his hand, clutched tightly were three white tail feathers. Seagull feathers.
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