After a catastrophic speed flying crash in Switzerland, Mike Brewer faced devastating injuries and an uncertain future as he fought his way back to an elite position in the sport
The Crash
I glitched. One minute I was standing on a Swiss hillside. Then I blinked and I was in a hospital bed – all bandages and IVs and beeping monitors – with no memory of the past 17 days.
It was like magic! If magic sucked.
I learned a lot the day I came to. I learned that the secret behind this particular magic trick was a failed speed flying launch from a seventy-foot cliff. I learned that I sustained a TBI, as well as fractures across my face and head, my jaw, my arm, my pelvis, and both of my legs. I learned that I hiked about one-hundred meters across steep terrain, was airlifted from the mountain, underwent four surgeries, and lost twenty pounds since my last memory.
I learned that my doctors were doubtful I would ever return to high-level sports. Pre-accident, I was always most comfortable expressing myself through movement. My body had been my career, my playground, my home. Now I couldn’t sit up to eat. In fact, I couldn’t even eat—pesky broken jaw. Finally, I learned that I was more stubborn than I had ever known, because all I wanted to do anymore was to prove my doctors wrong. More than anything, I wanted to fly again.
Panic, Perspective, and Responsibility
Of course, I had no idea where to start. Maybe the right response would have been to calmly process this new information, accept my lack of control in the situation, and patiently wait for my condition to improve.
My response was to freak out.
Luckily for me and my whole care team, I was exhausted, immobilized, and on lots of painkillers, so the panic ended pretty quickly. Once it did, I began discovering some useful things.
First, it was that my perspective dictates my experience. Until this point, I thought my experience objectively sucked. Pain, uncertain future, etc. Then I thought about the people I knew who had made the same mistake I had and realized none of them had survived. In that moment I realized my experience only subjectively sucked. I was lucky not to have died immediately, and then I had worked really hard to stay alive to experience this pain and uncertainty. I must have really wanted to be here. It was my choice to be here and my privilege to be here, and that perspective made my experience easier to endure.
One of the trickiest steps of my recovery was accepting that one of the worst experiences of my life led to some of the best.
Mike Brewer
It also meant that I couldn’t think of myself as a victim, as tempting as it was. Sure, it’s never nice to add insult to injury, but let’s be real. I made a mistake while voluntarily participating in a very dangerous sport. Nobody made that mistake for me, and nobody could recover for me. I could wallow in my helplessness, or I could radically accept responsibility, learn from my mistake, and work as hard as I could to come back from it. I was the one to blame. I was the one who had to fix this.
Rebuilding Through Small Goals
I wanted to fly again more than anything, but I still didn’t have a path. I had to rely on what I already knew and what I could learn, and invent one. Before my crash, I was all about tackling goals, so I approached this goal the same way I would approach any other.
I broke it down into increasingly smaller steps until I had a list of things I could achieve every single day (a trick I learned from my friend and knee-surgery twin, Amber Forte). Then I didn’t have to think about the mountain of rehab to overcome. I was playing a winnable game. I could just tick off my list every day and be proud of myself and my progress. I went from planning big B.A.S.E. trips to planning solo limps to the back porch to see the sun. It didn’t matter. It still felt good to do something difficult.
Goal setting gave me direction and some dignity, but recovery can still be a dark place, particularly if you’ve progressed from radical acceptance of responsibility to vicious self-blame. That’s a good time to ask for help. I had learned so many good things since waking up, but I had also learned how to be really mean to myself.
A friend recommended a therapist to whom I was inclined to give a chance, being that she is part of the air-sports community. I’m glad I did. She helped me see that my self-criticism wasn’t totally a bad thing. It was the competitive part of me wanting to make sure I never made a mistake like that again. It could manifest as guilt or as an ally, and the choice was mine. I started accepting the positive motivation behind those thoughts, then stopped my reflection when it twisted from analysis to abuse. I stopped saying anything to myself that I wouldn’t say to a friend. Life got a lot better after that.
The Decision to Fly Again
As my body healed, I entered uncharted territory. I didn’t feel perfect, but I also didn’t hurt enough to think flying was impossible. Yet, my feet stayed on the ground. I think I was waiting for someone to give me permission to start again. I searched everywhere for answers.
Doctors would, at best, dodge a committed answer, and, at worst, tell me to find a different career. Finally, I got the best advice a doctor has ever given me.
“Stop looking for answers that don’t exist.”
She told me I was an athlete in a fringe sport that has never been credibly researched. No doctor would ever give me the go-ahead. My career was medically unadvisable to begin with. It was my job to understand my injuries and risks as well as possible and then use my knowledge of the sport to find a way forward.
“Risk vs. reward” is a fundamental concept in air sports. The risk side is discussed ad nauseam. It’s strange that the reward side is largely taken for granted. I spent my months in recovery asking myself very intentionally, “Why?” What did I want out of flying?
At the top of my list were sustainable fun, creative inspiration, and a challenge through which I could grow into the best version of myself. Defining those motivations helped filter out the noise and made it easier to see which risks were acceptable.
The year of my injury, I made my first long-form documentary. The next year I became a first-time world champion. Then I joined the Red Bull Air Force…
Mike Brewer
Returning to the Sky
So with this in mind, I gradually returned to flying. I completely started over in speed flying. I took a first flight course, changed to a student-style wing for a whole season, and raised my standards of acceptable conditions and launches. After came my return to skydiving, and finally to B.A.S.E. jumping.
On the anniversary of my crash, I went back to Switzerland and launched from a forgiving location about an hour’s hike above where I crashed. I flew over the site, put it behind me, and chased a three-thousand-foot waterfall down to the valley floor, finishing the flight I never did a year prior.
Lessons From Recovery
Often in my recovery I felt like I was wasting time. At some point I realized that it was only a waste if I didn’t learn something from it, and I learned a lot. I became more appreciative. More empathetic. I learned the importance of keeping your loved ones close. I became more invested in my health. I became more focused.
The year of my injury, I made my first long-form documentary. The next year I became a first-time world champion. Then I joined the Red Bull Air Force, a team that has inspired me since I was a teenager.
If I could go back in time and walk away from that flight, of course I would. But since I can’t, I choose to be appreciative. One of the trickiest steps of my recovery was accepting that one of the worst experiences of my life led to some of the best.
If you’re reading this from a hospital bed, I feel for you. Recovery is a difficult and uncertain path, and I hope that no matter where your recovery takes you, you find a way to laugh at the bad parts, learn all you can, and get back to doing whatever it is that fires you up.
