Thanksgiving week 2025, lifting off from Long Beach toward Catalina Island, I felt it again — that familiar blend of awe, adrenaline, and gratitude. The helicopter banked over the Pacific, the coastline slipping away beneath us, and I thought: I know how lucky I am.
Some people collect souvenirs. I collect moments above the ground.
This most recent flight — a new route from Long Beach to Catalina with Maverick Helicopters — came just after my 58th birthday. It felt less like celebration and more like confirmation: the impulse to rise hasn’t dimmed with time. Flight, for me, has never been about speed. It’s about perspective — seeing familiar places from unfamiliar angles and being fully present in moments that can never be repeated exactly the same way again.
On Catalina, the adventure continued — ziplining through the island’s rugged landscape with Aaron, laughter echoing between cables, the ocean stretching endlessly beyond us. It felt like a fitting way to spend Thanksgiving week: airborne, grounded in gratitude, and aware that access like this is never something to take lightly.
“Just after turning 58, I lifted off toward Catalina and realized — the impulse to rise hasn’t dimmed.”
Before Helicopters, There Was a Balloon
Long before helicopters and glaciers and Antarctica, there was a hot air balloon in Utah.
In August 2015 — less than a year after my divorce — I found myself in Heber City, climbing into a basket with Park City Balloon Adventures on the way to my first-ever visit to Yellowstone. I didn’t think of it as bravery at the time. I just knew I wanted to feel lifted again.
Floating above the landscape was quiet in a way nothing else I’d experienced had been. No rush. No forward motion. Just air, clouds, and the unfamiliar sensation of trusting something I couldn’t control. It felt less like escape and more like permission — to begin again, gently.
I didn’t know then that this moment would become a precursor to my 50 Things Project, or that it would eventually lead to Brave-ish. I only knew that being in the sky made space for possibility — and that sometimes, starting over doesn’t require a leap. Sometimes it begins with a slow rise.
If Catalina reminded me why I love flight, New York City reminded me why I trust it.
For my birthday in 2023, my sister and I climbed into a doors-off helicopter and lifted into the Manhattan sky with FlyNYON. The wind roared. The city grid sharpened beneath us. The Statue of Liberty stood steady in the harbor, and Central Park unspooled like a green ribbon through concrete. It is known for having the best shoe-selfie in the world!
It was viscerally alive — but it was also deeply personal. Sharing that moment with my sister, suspended above a city that has shaped so many chapters of my life, made the experience less about spectacle and more about connection.
Flight has a way of stripping things down to what matters. Up there, you don’t multitask. You don’t scroll. You look. You feel. You remember.
“Doors off. Wind roaring. My sister beside me. This is how New York looks when you let go.”
The Flights We Think Are the Pinnacle
Before I ever imagined helicopters in Antarctica, I thought landing in the Grand Canyon was the peak.
Flying from Las Vegas with Maverick Helicopters, descending into that vast, ancient landscape, watching color and scale shift as the canyon opened beneath us — it felt defining. A few years later, with Papillon Helicopters, touching down again in the Grand Canyon reinforced the belief: This is as good as it gets.
And at the time, it was.
Those flights mattered because they cracked something open. They showed me that flight wasn’t just transportation — it was access. To places that demand respect. To landscapes that dwarf human concerns.
Only later did I realize they were also the beginning.
“I thought landing in the Grand Canyon was the peak. I was wrong.”
Coastlines, Courage, and the Truth About Bravery
Flying over San Diego — the city giving way to coastline, the Pacific stretching endlessly — felt almost serene. Nearby La Jolla would ask something different of me.
Skydiving there with GoJump Oceanside marked the moment I finally understood more about what it took to be brave.
My skydiving guide was calm, confident, utterly at ease jumping from a plane — but he was afraid of sharks. He would never scuba dive with them. I was the opposite: terrified to skydive, comfortable underwater. Until that moment, I had thought of him as brave and myself as not.
But bravery isn’t universal. It’s specific. We’re all brave-ish — capable in some places, fearful in others — and what makes the difference is opportunity, experience, and having someone beside us who knows the way.
Brave-ish grew out of my 50 Things Project, but it was skydiving that clarified the lesson: courage isn’t a personality trait — it’s a practice. Turning 50 didn’t make me reckless; it made me precise about what I was no longer willing to postpone.
“My skydiving guide was afraid of sharks. I was afraid to jump. That’s when I learned what brave-ish really means.”
When Flight Is Ease — and That’s Enough
Not every helicopter ride has to change your life.
Sometimes, it’s simply exquisite.
A private Monacair helicopter from Monaco to Nice at sunset is one of those moments that feels almost cinematic — the Riviera glowing gold, the sea catching the last light of day. It was brief, beautiful, and effortless.
And then, just as quickly, it was over.
Flight teaches contrast as much as it teaches scale.
“Sometimes flight isn’t transformative. It’s just exquisite — and that’s enough.”
When Flight Becomes the Only Way In
Alaska changed the tone entirely. A K2 aviation flightseeing journey over Denali— not a helicopter, but no less transformative — revealed a scale that resists language. Mountains don’t perform for you; they exist. Also in Alaska, I took a flight over Taku Glacier from the Majestic Princess. I had gone on many of the tours when I worked for Princess Cruises and when I returned as a passenger it was even more wonderful adding another layer, ice and time folding together beneath us.
Here, flight stopped being about ease and became about necessity. These places are not easily reached. They are not meant to be. And that’s precisely why being invited into them matters.
Small planes carried me to Seal River Lodge and Nanuk Polar Bear Lodge — gateways to experiences that felt both exhilarating and humbling. I loved walking alongside polar bears with Churchill Wild. We watched wolves move across tundra. We saw beluga whales and listened to them sing! I did a polar plunge!
None of this felt casual. None of it felt owed. Flight, in these moments, wasn’t about elevation — it was about responsibility. About witnessing without disrupting. About understanding how fragile and extraordinary these ecosystems truly are.
“Small planes carried us to a world where humans are not in charge.”
The Badlands: Ancient Earth From Above
Long before Antarctica reframed my understanding of the planet, the Badlands of South Dakota offered a different kind of revelation.
Flying with Black Hills Aerial Adventures, I lifted above nearly 243,000 acres of buttes, pinnacles, and spires — a landscape shaped more by erosion and time than by anything human hands could ever attempt to control. Below us stretched Badlands National Park, where close to 65,000 acres are designated wilderness, protecting fragile ecosystems and supporting the reintroduction of endangered species.
From the air, the terrain looked almost otherworldly — sculptural, exposed, unapologetically ancient. It’s also home to the world’s richest Oligocene fossil beds, a reminder that this land has been telling stories for millions of years before we ever arrived to witness them.
Flight, here, wasn’t about access to the remote. It was about seeing deep time made visible — and understanding how briefly we pass through it.
With Quark Expeditions, stepping into a helicopter on the southernmost continent wasn’t thrilling in the conventional sense. It was reverent. The ice below was stark and sculptural, shaped by wind, cold, and time, untouched in ways that feel almost impossible in our modern world.
I don’t chase flight for bragging rights. I chase it because rising above the ground reminds me how small we are — and how lucky.
Each helicopter, each plane, each jump has offered a different lesson: perspective, courage, ease, restraint, responsibility. Together, they form a map of who I’ve been becoming — someone who says yes, who notices, who understands that access is a privilege and gratitude is a practice.
This Thanksgiving, lifting off toward Catalina, I felt it all converge — the past flights, the future ones, and the quiet understanding that none of this should ever be taken for granted.
I don’t know where the next flight will take me. I only know that when given the chance to rise, I’m still saying yes.
When we teach our children, the lesson they glean should be sharp and clear enough, so they feel anchored by our tradition and confident in our values.
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Choosing to Rise: A Life Told Through Helicopter Flight
Lisa Ellen Niver
Before Helicopters, There Was a Balloon
Long before helicopters and glaciers and Antarctica, there was a hot air balloon in Utah.
In August 2015 — less than a year after my divorce — I found myself in Heber City, climbing into a basket with Park City Balloon Adventures on the way to my first-ever visit to Yellowstone. I didn’t think of it as bravery at the time. I just knew I wanted to feel lifted again.
Floating above the landscape was quiet in a way nothing else I’d experienced had been. No rush. No forward motion. Just air, clouds, and the unfamiliar sensation of trusting something I couldn’t control. It felt less like escape and more like permission — to begin again, gently.
I didn’t know then that this moment would become a precursor to my 50 Things Project, or that it would eventually lead to Brave-ish. I only knew that being in the sky made space for possibility — and that sometimes, starting over doesn’t require a leap. Sometimes it begins with a slow rise.
VIDEO: Fly with Park City Balloon Adventures
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