I wanted to fly a gyrocopter – so I learned how to, at 57

A few months ago, I asked myself what seemed at the time a simple question: could I, at 57 years old, learn something new? It had been a long time since I had set my mind to a set of really immersive new skills.

I had been mulling a certain skill for a while. It wasn’t completely foreign, yet would still require some large neural resets and challenges – some good old psychological disequilibrium.

I wanted to fly a gyrocopter.

The gyrocopter is a strange machine, with the silhouette of a wasp and a name that sounds like a disease one might catch in the tropics. Yes, I was already an experienced pilot. I had learned to fly fixed-wing aircraft, specifically Cessnas, when I was 20; I turned to paragliding in my 30s.

Still, a gyro was different from these other aircraft. It had characteristics of both a helicopter and a plane, with a large rotor on the top and a propeller behind (thus some called it a gyrocopter, others a gyroplane), yet it was neither. This was fitting because I was 57 years old, not young but not old, either. It was the perfect leap to take.

But hold on. Was it smart to learn to fly a gyrocopter at my age? Like many women, I had gone through my early 50s with a body that seemed to betray me daily. Perimenopause had caught me by surprise. No one had mentioned that I would be crying suddenly and for little reason, that my brain would insist that sleep was stupid and that pacing the kitchen and eating stale tortillas was better, and that I would experience a general loss of memory, including, worst of all, an inability to identify faces, which caused me embarrassment and lots of “Hey … you” salutations at social engagements. It had cut into my confidence.

Ageing has long been proclaimed a constant diminution, not just of muscle mass, reproductive hormones, eyesight and skin tone, but of the brain as well. As you aged, the theory went, the brain shrunk. Corners folded in. Synapses blinked out like cheap lights. And it happened early. Thinkers and scientists from Freud to Piaget claimed that brain growth ended in our early 20s, and then we were fixed there. All that could be done was to cling as desperately as possible to what we had; then, as we aged, our handhold steadily slipped, like a climber on a slowly crumbling wall, until it broke away completely, tumbling us into the void of dementia and ill health.

Except this is complete and utter hogwash.

As more recent research shows, the brain continually grows, changes, and adapts as we age. We do keep learning throughout our life span. Not only do our brains build new synaptic connections, but they can create entirely new brain cells, at any age. At some point there will be a natural decline, and the brain may not be able to rely on the neural pathways it once did. But it doesn’t give up; instead, our trusty control center adapts by visiting new locales for information, like some steadily expanding highway system.

It’s worth noting here that it was a woman who proved that the icons of science had gotten it so wrong when they proclaimed that brains calcify early and then retreat. Neuroscientist Marian Diamond was in her 40s when her research showed that a human brain can grow and change even as we age; she was met with incredulity and cries of incompetence from many of her fellow (male) scientists, which receded only in the face of mounting evidence.

Since Diamond’s groundbreaking work, it’s become clear that neural growth not only means that we keep our smarts, but the new pathways we lay down may lead to different and more innovative thinking than a younger brain produces. In other words, despite “some losses with age, such as neural regions less active in older adults than in young … older adults could recruit regions of the brain to support cognitive functions in ways unlike young adults”. All this brain “plasticity”, as it has come to be called, flies in the face of previous scientific beliefs and, even slower to fall, our cultural ones. But believe it. Believe it as if your life depends on it. Because it does.

An enriched older brain, studies show, leads overwhelmingly to longer life, better health, and sharper cognition. So how do we prod our neurons to keep firing with enthusiasm? Research points to self-care like sleep, exercise, companionship and reduced stress, of course. But also, “novelty, focused attention and challenge”. The more we push our neural pathways to confront new questions and conundrums, the more we keep our cognitive functions spry. In other words, when we learn something new, we nurture and energize our brain, and we live longer, healthier lives.

I decided, what the heck. I’ll see for myself. I’ll sign up for gyrocopter lessons.

Gyrocopters represent the very fringe of flying. There aren’t many instructors, and all the ones I was told about were men, which was fine and to be expected; only a little more than 6% of all pilots are women, so the percentage who fly gyrocopters is no doubt well under minuscule. Then I stumbled upon a website for Britta Penca. She taught out of a tiny airport in Arizona. On the phone she was relaxed, amiable, confident. She told me that she had gone to seminary, she had been employed at crisis centers, she had worked with psychiatric patients. All this seemed perfect training for a gyrocopter instructor. Even better, it turned out she was 55 years old. I signed up.

Britta assured me that I could learn to fly gyros, despite being 57. “Women at any age make great pilots. There’s more finesse, more presence,” she said. And being an older woman? That was actually an advantage in Britta’s book. We’ve had years of things like marriage, or children, or a big career, or just making ends meet, she explains. “Now we’re turning our sights to ‘What about me? What brings me joy?’ Our consciousness is expanded and fine-tuned. We’re more grounded, more experienced. And more confident.”

It may be harder to learn when older, Britta agreed. But it isn’t because my brain is less functional. It’s because I have so much experience, so much accumulated knowledge. In other words, any difficulty I have learning the gyro will not be because I’m losing my mind with age. It will be because my head is completely full up with knowledge, leaving little space for new information. As Britta said this I imagined all the cluttered rooms in my brain, and how they would now need to be emptied for new know-how. “I guess I’ll chuck those four years of college to clear some space,” I nervously joked.

So now I’m here, in the front seat of Britta’s gyro, getting pummeled by thermals and a mean crosswind. Britta turns for the runway like a barrel racer. My intestines shift. I command myself to slow my breathing, employing those trusty combat breaths. Britta aborts the next landing.

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“Sometimes it takes a while,” she says, and I can hear the shrug of her shoulders in her voice. “Luckily, we have a lot of fuel.”

The next few moments consist of sink, lift, sink, lift, punctuated sometimes by a sideways shudder. These conditions are new to me – I’ve flown my motorized hang glider in turbulence, but I never would have allowed myself to be airborne in this weather. Gyrocopters, however, handle high winds and robust thermals very well. Still, I don’t expect what I hear next in my headset from Britta: “I’m going to try to land into the crosswind, across the runway, OK?”

Despite the question mark at the end of her sentence she’s not asking my permission. She’s warning me, because landing perpendicular to a runway is not normal business. Very few aircraft can perform this maneuver, though a gyro piloted by someone like Britta is evidently one of them.

My mind screams WHAT THE HELL. “Sure, no problem,” I say instead. Before I know it, we are skimming the empty airplane parking area, with the pilot shack on one side and the hangars on the other. Ahead and perpendicular to us is the runway. Her plan, I can now see, is to stay headed into the wind (which is how the aircraft wants to land; gyrocopters need runway to both take off and return) for as long as possible and then … touch down using the width of the runway only? Turn radically and use the length of the runway? I’m not sure. Things are losing their meaning right now. Just as we pass low over the taxiway, I hear her say: “Darn.”

Darn?

The throttle roars, the gyro quickly gains altitude, once again we have aborted. “Wind shifted again,” Britta sighs. I laugh, a little wildly. The truth is that, despite my nerves, I am also having what might be called … fun. The air may be unpredictable, but the gyro is nimble and my instructor is unflappable. I settle in to try to really enjoy whatever happens next.

Britta lines up for a normal runway landing now. She aims for midfield. It’s our sixth – or is it the seventh? – attempt. She keeps the gyro a few feet above the asphalt for a long time, then there is a slight stickiness, a hesitation in the speed that I finally recognize as the most gentle of touchdowns. Britta has set us onto the ground as if there were no crosswind at all.

“Amazing,” I whisper into the headset.

She answers with a small laugh: “I was just waiting for one I liked.”

Learning is difficult for any brain, but trying to absorb novel information while also going mano a mano with anxiety, confusion, and a shifting digestive system can cause some short-circuiting. There is a line between shaking up the neural network to make space for new connectors and freaking out so much that it just shuts down. In the coming days, we simply land before the weather becomes too rowdy.

But the extreme psychological disequilibrium I experience today has been enough to change my baseline perspective for good. I’ve seen what a gyro can do in a maelstrom with the right pilot at the helm. I will be less and less unnerved each time the winds kick up. Even if it takes seven attempts, I will make sure that my landing is always one that I like.

From Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking – How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age by Caroline Paul, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Copyright 2024 by Caroline Paul. All rights reserved