I was going to write this month about my
experience of getting a tailwheel endorsement, but Phil Boyer beat me to
it in the January issue of AOPA Pilot. It’s a great article, and I
would not even try to compete with that picture on page 64. Suffice to say, that if your
flying has been confined to trikes, you really should take advantage of
the opportunity and get with Scott O’Brien and fly with him in his
Citabria. You’ll learn what a
rudder is really for, build up your leg muscles, and have some fun. And, as Phil Boyer says, you’ll
become a real pilot (although, in my case, Scott may have a
different opinion).
On to this month’s topic, which is of a
literary nature. Pilots are
not often thought of as a philosophical or introspective lot, obsessed as
we are with technology and procedures. Our language is normally composed
of acronyms and jargon that only those within the aviation community can
decipher. And from our first
lesson onward, we’re urged to keep our radio communication brief, to the
point, and please – unemotional. This is all well and good and even
necessary, but there is another side to aviation, one that touches on why
we fly and what we feel. The
writings of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Ernest Gann, Richard Bach and others
come to mind for their classic prose, but it may surprise you that there
is a substantial volume of aviation poetry out there also.
Because I Fly (McGraw-Hill, 2002, edited by
Helmut Reda) is a compilation of 170 aviation poems spanning the period
from 1869 to 2001. 1869, 34
years before the Wright Brothers first flight? Yes, John Townsend Trowbridge
takes the credit for the oldest poem, “Darius Greene and His
Flying-Machine”, which is actually quite funny. The authors range from the well
known, such as William Butler Yeats and John Ciardi, to the ever-popular
Author Unknown (who was actually quite prolific). Even Patty Wagstaff has
an entry.
The collection is divided into 15 sections,
including “The Classics”,
“Pilots”, “Military
Service”, “Historical Feats”,
and the somber “Death by Flying”. The book opens with
the Classic of the Classics, “High Flight”, which, in case you’ve
forgotten, begins
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling
mirth
Of sun-split clouds – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of –
(You may remember Ronald Reagan quoting this
poem in a speech after the Challenger tragedy).
A year after Amelia Earhart vanished, Gill
Robb Wilson wrote “Amelia”, which could apply to many a missing pilot and
ends with the touching lines
Somewhere a spirit whose course held true
To do the thing that it wished to do;
But here, only silence and weary eyes
And an empty hangar and empty skies.
There is ample homage to the weather. This one, called “Rotor Winds”,
gets right to the point
Rotor winds, I hate you,
You are no friend of mine.
You shake my plane
You shake my frame,
You jar my very spine.
(Didn’t Jerry Lee Lewis record
that?)
Here’s one some of us can relate to, titled
“Her First Solo”
There was a student pilot,
Her name was Jeannette.
She took off in a Tomahawk
And hasn’t come down yet.
(There’s more, but you’ll have to get the
book to find out what happens).
There’s a good range here, from the humorous
to the philosophical to the tragic, something to fit just about any
mood. So some evening when
the winter wind howls and you sit nodding by the fire, and flying is just
a distant glimmer in your mind, take down this book, and slowly read what
others have written about the joy, the thrill, the sadness - the spiritual
bonds that unite us pilots.
(Thanks to W.B. Yeats for allowing me to borrow
some of his lines).
