Doesn’t it just feel good to jump? Take a great mad stride and let your limbs vault you skyward and it’s as if your spirit is compelled to soar along with your body. Jumping for no real reason expresses a delectable exuberance, a celebration of one’s physicality, and one’s presence upon (or over) a particular place, and the smile that comes along with the ride is irrepressible.

Michelle started it. We were all out at the A Frame during Winfly. She ran around the back and when she came all the way around the front from the other side, she leapt with what appeared to be reckless abandon toward any conservation of energy or concern for her inevitable return to the ground. The gesture was giddy.

Who jumps for no real reason? Kittens. Lambs. Children. It’s a trait among new animals to test the capacity to bound against the force of gravity. And who doesn’t want to feel like a new animal?

No doubt we live beyond ourselves in air,

In an element that does not do for us,
so well, that which we do for ourselves, too big,
A thing not planned for imagery or belief…

Wallace Stevens,
from “Looking Across the Fields and Watching the Birds Fly”

So we succumbed to our delightful capacity to defy gravity. For the next day we ran around leaping like idiots, taking pictures of that moment before we had to accede the necessity of contact with the snow of Antarctica, and we had the best time.

Check out the Leap in Antarctica photo gallery