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"Flying like a bird" is not just poetic license - soaring birds
like hawks and buzzards essentially fly the same way we do on hang gliders -
using rising air currents from ridge lift and thermals. I have flown side by
side and turned in thermals with both hawks and buzzards, and that is a common
experience on a good soaring day. And it is not just that you are flying next to
birds, but the wing has become an extension of your body at that point, because
of the kinesthetics of weight shift flying. It is a similar thing to the
comparison between a car and a motorcycle - in one you use pedals and wheels and
levers to drive, the other you "think turn" and you turn. With weight shift
flying your whole body is involved, so it really feels like the wing is a part
of you.

For some, "cross country" flying will become a passion. The first time you have
climbed so high in a thermal that you are closer to the clouds than the mountain
you launched from, then reached that point of I better go back or let it go -
and decided to cut the cord and see what the horizon offers - you'll never
forget that flight. From that point of the flight on you are not flying the
mountains below, but from cloud to cloud. (And you are hoping that you have a
really good friend who will come pick you up after you have landed 50 miles
away.)

Once you have flown at that level, even if you leave the sport, you will never
see the sky in the same way again. "Cloudbase" will no longer be a vague
description but a place you have known, you'll see hawks and buzzards and how
they are flying that day and know the experience of flying in the same sort of
air they are in, whether it be smooth and buoyant or strong and turbulent.