A Canopy Descent Over Interlaken

The exit at four thousand metres is loud — engine, wind, harness clatter. Then the canopy opens and everything stops. Interlaken from beneath a Swiss-packed main is a study in symmetry: Thun on the left, Brienz on the right, the town threaded on the ribbon between them. We coach students to spend the first minute doing nothing but looking. Steering, spot selection, landing pattern all come later. The point of the descent is not efficiency. It is the deliberate consumption of a view that Switzerland has spent ten thousand years arranging.