BASE Jumping the Sahara: A Pilgrimage to Honor My Dog

Article by Devin Mudcat Kelly

A personal essay about loss, adventure, and finding presence in the world's most unforgiving places.

The Call to Adventure

Sahara. The word itself was a call to adventure—an invocation, an invitation to wander willingly into the uncharted in search of some unknowable destiny.

It was a world new to me, yet older even than the myths of man. As a boy, I had felt those faraway places humming between the pages of a dog-eared atlas: a land of untamed sands and bridleless winds, shaped by sun and sediment into the ochre setting of every great story about the edge of the world and forgotten antiquity. Africa—the cradle and the crucible. The backdrop of every half-remembered myth that stirred my imagination.

I used to picture endless dunes, phantom oases, camel caravans laboring through heat haze, and the kind of silence that could swallow a man whole. It wasn't just the landscape that called to me—it was the idea of it. The last true wild. Even as I grew older, that word never lost its mystique. It pulsed beneath the surface like a reminiscent dream, like a compass buried in my chest.

So when the chance came to join a BASE expedition deep into the Algerian desert, I didn't hesitate. The place felt fated.

BASE jumping "The Thunder Run"

Stepping Into Another World

The moment I stepped off the plane in Djanet, the desert air hit me like a physical thing—dry, ancient, tasting of sand and incalculable distance. The Sahara felt less like a place and more like a presence: a living silence that hummed beneath the sand. Every direction stretched into forever. Dunes moved like waves of molasses, carved by wind and time into shapes that seemed to breathe on a scale that dwarfed human worries. At night, the stars burned low and close, heavy enough to touch.

It was the kind of vastness that stripped you down to the essentials: breath, heartbeat, horizon.

My Dog Thunder: The Teacher I Traveled With

I came here chasing the ghost of an old rhythm—that wild, uncontainable urge to go, to see what's out there, to move with purpose through the world. It was the same current that once pulled me and my dog Thunder through 32 countries: beaches and backroads, border crossings and mountain passes. We'd sleep in the dirt or under bridges, run through jungles and deserts alike, chasing nothing more than the feeling of being alive and in motion, always together.

That restlessness wasn't mine alone. It was ours.

Thunder taught me how to travel—present, curious, unafraid. He showed me that adventure isn't about conquering distance. It's about staying open to what the world wants to show you. He modeled a way of moving through life with joy and wonder that became the foundation for everything I do.

When the Compass Broke

When he died, that rhythm broke. The compass spun. I didn't know how to move through the world without him beside me, without his steady presence reminding me why we went in the first place.

This trip to Algeria was my attempt to find that feeling again—a reminder that the spirit that carried us wasn't gone, just waiting for me to pick up the trail. I told myself it was about BASE jumping, about scouting for new exits and exploring remote cliffs. But really, it was something closer to a pilgrimage. A way to honor my best friend the only way I knew how: by keeping the story going.

And there was something else, too. A quiet hope I barely admitted to myself: that maybe, if the desert was kind, I'd find a new exit worth opening. Something I could name after him. A way to put his name back on the map, to carve it into stone and sky where it belonged.

The Search: Desperation Disguised as Dedication

I spent days searching for that perfect Thunder exit. Hiking through sand and scree, scrambling up canyon walls, down-climbing questionable sandstone ledges, peering over edges that dropped into nothing. Every morning we'd load up packs and head out into the heat, scanning the horizon for anything that might work.

We jumped a handful of previously known exits, but I wanted that new one. So I searched.

There were close calls. A wall that looked perfect from below but crumbled under my hand when I climbed up to check it. A ledge with a clean drop but a bad landing zone—rocks scattered like teeth. Another that faced the wrong direction, the wind swirling unpredictably in the bowl below.

By the fourth day, I could feel myself pushing. Hiking longer. Staying out in the heat past the point of smart. Assessing exits that, in any other context, I would've walked away from without a second thought.

I started bargaining with the desert, with myself, with the idea of Thunder watching from somewhere I couldn't see. Just one. Just give me one clean exit. That's all I need.

And then I caught myself.

Stepping Back From the Edge

Standing on a ledge in the late afternoon sun, staring down at a drop that might work if enough variables aligned, I heard Thunder's voice in my head—not literally, but the way he used to look at me when I was about to do something stupid. That calm, patient stare that said: You know better than this.

He never pushed me into danger. He was always about smart decisions, not reckless ones. About being present, not desperate. About trusting the process, not forcing the outcome.

I took a breath and stepped back from the edge.

It's okay if I don't open a new exit for Thunder on this trip.

The moment I said it—out loud, to the empty desert—the pressure lifted. I wasn't here to prove anything. I was here to honor Thunder by moving through the world the way he taught me: with patience, with presence, with trust that the right thing would reveal itself when the time was right.

The desert didn't change. But I did.

Finding What You Stop Looking For

The next morning was our final day in the desert. The plan was simple: hike out to a known exit, get one more flight in, call it a trip.

But somewhere along the way, we got turned around. Wrong canyon, wrong approach. We kept hiking anyway, trusting our feet more than our memory, letting the desert guide us where it wanted us to go.

And then I saw it.

A ledge. Clean. Jutting out from the cliff face at just the right angle. I stopped, stared, felt something click in my chest.

I walked to the edge and peered over. The drop looked good—clean air, clear landing zone, no obstacles in the flight path. I scrambled around to the side, downclimbing a few meters to check the wall from below. Everything looked solid. No loose rock. No hidden hazards. Just clean stone and open sky.

This was it. The Thunder Run.

The Fated Flight

I prepared my pilot chute and nodded to my friends. No words needed. They knew what it meant.

I walked to the edge, took a breath, and ran.

The moment my feet left the rock, everything else fell away. The pressure. The searching. The weight of the last few days. There was only the fall, the wind, the vast emptiness of the Sahara opening up beneath me. I pitched my pilot chute, felt the canopy deploy, and suddenly I was flying—gliding over ancient stone and endless sand.

I landed soft in the sand and stood there for a moment, just breathing, just feeling it. The stillness. The rightness of it.

It hadn't happened because I forced it. It happened because I let go. Because I trusted the process. Because I moved through the world the way Thunder taught me—present, patient, open to what wanted to be found.

I looked up at the cliff, at the ledge I'd just launched from, and I knew Thunder's legacy was carved into this place now. Not just in stone and sky, but in how it came to be. Organically. Honestly. The way he would've wanted.

The desert had been kind after all.

How We Really Honor Those We've Lost

Thunder never needed monuments. He never needed his name on anything. What he needed—what he gave—was simpler than that: presence, patience, and the quiet wisdom to know when to push and when to trust.

He taught me that adventure isn't about conquest. It's about curiosity. About staying open. About moving through the world with wonder instead of force.

The Thunder Run exists now. It's on the map. Someday, other jumpers will hike out to that ledge and launch into the same sky I did. They'll say his name before they jump. And in that way, he'll keep moving through the world—just like he always did.

But the real tribute isn't the exit. It's the lesson.

We don't lose our dogs when they die. We lose them when we stop moving the way they taught us to—with joy, with curiosity, with no leash on life. When we forget to be present. When we stop trusting the process. When we force outcomes instead of staying open to what wants to be found.

What Thunder Taught Me

Thunder didn't just teach me how to travel. He taught me how to live.

How to assess risk without recklessness. How to push boundaries without losing wisdom. How to explore with purpose but without desperation. Every trail we walked, every border we crossed, every night we slept under stars in some unnamed place—he was showing me what it meant to be fully alive. Fully present. Fully here.

That's what I was searching for in the Sahara. Not just an exit to name after him. But proof that those lessons were still alive in me. That the rhythm we built together could still carry me forward, even when he wasn't beside me anymore.

And the desert gave me that answer—not when I was forcing it, but when I finally let go.

Thunder's Legacy Lives On

The Thunder Run wasn't just a jump. It was a reminder that love, like the desert horizon, doesn't end. It just keeps going. It lives in the way we move through the world. In the decisions we make. In the presence we bring to each moment. In the trust we place in the unknown.

Our dogs don't just shape our adventures. They shape us. The way we see. The way we decide what's worth the risk and what's worth letting go. The way we honor not just their memory, but their wisdom.

 

Here's to Thunder. And here's to all the dogs who make us better—braver, wiser, more present than we'd ever be without them.

The best way to honor them isn't with stillness. It's with motion. With discovery. With gratitude for what they showed us and the courage to keep showing up for it.

Keep exploring. Keep honoring. Keep the story going.

The trail is still there, waiting.

 

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Thunder's impact on my life extends far beyond this one jump in the Sahara. If you want to dive deeper into our story—the travels, the adventures, the quiet moments that changed everything—I've written a full memoir about our time together. Start with the opening excerpt at A Promise to Thunder.