A Flying Leap
Flying along the west coast of Alaska is as common as driving to the grocery store in the lower 48. In the village of Unalakleet, on the edge of the Bering Sea, I leapt into an adventure that I have since looked back on as awfully risky and absolutely exhilarating.
A wild fire had swept across the tundra and one of the high school students, Paul, was going to spend the afternoon flying over the tundra scouting the fire’s path. Sure, I’d go along. We walked down to the landing strip, basically a long, flat gravel area edged by a few parked planes. We walked past a Cesna, a sturdy Beechcraft, a couple of nice Piper Cubs until he stopped at what he insisted was a sound flying craft. It was actually a cobbled together wreck. It had no instruments, patches on every conceivable part of the body and wing, and the fuel gauge was a pencil stuck into a cork which bobbed through a whole in the open gas tank (front and center as you looked out of the cock pit). After a plane crash on the tundra, the custom was to wait a respectful amount of time and then scavenge every usable bit of the wreck for parts. Paul’s plane was nothing but parts.
In any venture, you have to make the first initial leap. A leap of the imagination? A leap of faith? In this case, an actual flying leap was the only way to get into the rickety, mangled cockpit. That first leap required a kind of foolish faith and the fortitude to follow through. The imagined rewards of the flight outweighed the risks, so I leapt. The plane rumbled and rattled down the gravel path and with a great deal of rib-shaking agitation, took off. With no buffers between the workings of the plane and the two makeshift seats, the noise forced sign language over speaking. I could hear the cables stretching and creaking when they moved the flaps, I could smell the grease, and, strangely, a strong scent of tundra plants and dirt. What could that mean?
Leaping into the unknown is dangerous. Flying, like the creative process, requires courage to leap with your imagination. We were leaping into the sky! It took some time before I felt comfortable enough to look over the tundra below. Paul showed me how to work the hand and foot controls and then said. “Okay, your turn.” At this point I had the sudden realization that I was in a piece of junk with a 17 year old pilot, little experience, and no one knew we were out there. I made a leap of my own imagination, took the controls and flew that plane.
At some point you forget that you are in the space between the clouds and the ground, you fly, you and the plane are the connection. We were following the Unalakleet River. Absolutely the most beautiful sights, sounds and smells have come to me on that river. We buzzed, searched, and made notes of which Fish camps were burned and which were safe.
As we moved along we kept a visual connection with the ground, searching back and forth—land to sky, sky to land—just as in creating art the artist moves between the imagination and the materials and techniques that ground (and sometimes confine) him/her. An artist paints ideas but uses basic, ordinary materials to make the painting happen. An artist flies in that space between the material world and the immaterial, between the ground and the clouds.
I have flown many times since and had before, but that flight sticks in my memory because the plane was so primitive that I had the immediate sensation that I was making it happen. Eventually we had to land, the pencil had disappeared into the gas tank. At the end of the village runway there is a cemetery. I handed back the controls, I knew my limits, landing was his territory.
A wild fire had swept across the tundra and one of the high school students, Paul, was going to spend the afternoon flying over the tundra scouting the fire’s path. Sure, I’d go along. We walked down to the landing strip, basically a long, flat gravel area edged by a few parked planes. We walked past a Cesna, a sturdy Beechcraft, a couple of nice Piper Cubs until he stopped at what he insisted was a sound flying craft. It was actually a cobbled together wreck. It had no instruments, patches on every conceivable part of the body and wing, and the fuel gauge was a pencil stuck into a cork which bobbed through a whole in the open gas tank (front and center as you looked out of the cock pit). After a plane crash on the tundra, the custom was to wait a respectful amount of time and then scavenge every usable bit of the wreck for parts. Paul’s plane was nothing but parts.
In any venture, you have to make the first initial leap. A leap of the imagination? A leap of faith? In this case, an actual flying leap was the only way to get into the rickety, mangled cockpit. That first leap required a kind of foolish faith and the fortitude to follow through. The imagined rewards of the flight outweighed the risks, so I leapt. The plane rumbled and rattled down the gravel path and with a great deal of rib-shaking agitation, took off. With no buffers between the workings of the plane and the two makeshift seats, the noise forced sign language over speaking. I could hear the cables stretching and creaking when they moved the flaps, I could smell the grease, and, strangely, a strong scent of tundra plants and dirt. What could that mean?
Leaping into the unknown is dangerous. Flying, like the creative process, requires courage to leap with your imagination. We were leaping into the sky! It took some time before I felt comfortable enough to look over the tundra below. Paul showed me how to work the hand and foot controls and then said. “Okay, your turn.” At this point I had the sudden realization that I was in a piece of junk with a 17 year old pilot, little experience, and no one knew we were out there. I made a leap of my own imagination, took the controls and flew that plane.
At some point you forget that you are in the space between the clouds and the ground, you fly, you and the plane are the connection. We were following the Unalakleet River. Absolutely the most beautiful sights, sounds and smells have come to me on that river. We buzzed, searched, and made notes of which Fish camps were burned and which were safe.
As we moved along we kept a visual connection with the ground, searching back and forth—land to sky, sky to land—just as in creating art the artist moves between the imagination and the materials and techniques that ground (and sometimes confine) him/her. An artist paints ideas but uses basic, ordinary materials to make the painting happen. An artist flies in that space between the material world and the immaterial, between the ground and the clouds.
I have flown many times since and had before, but that flight sticks in my memory because the plane was so primitive that I had the immediate sensation that I was making it happen. Eventually we had to land, the pencil had disappeared into the gas tank. At the end of the village runway there is a cemetery. I handed back the controls, I knew my limits, landing was his territory.
