Author: Sarah Wilson

He was protecting me from you.

Missing the missing man.  We saved a slot for him in the sky on the airshow fly-by.  Look up.  Do you see him in the space we erased?  I do.  Look down, he’s standing right in front of you.  Go on.  Keep talking about the planes and how many men were killed in them.  About sacrifice and the meaning of loss.  He’s listening to every word you say.  Can’t you see his fuse ignite.  He’s smoldering inside.  Internal detonation.  It wasn’t a sentimental journey to him.  But he won’t say a word to you.  You just keep looking at the planes.  Commemorating the dead, forget about the living.  Enjoy the airshow.  You don’t see what you’re missing, but I do.

The missing man’s signaling dot, dot, dot.  Dash, dash, dash.  Dot, dot, dot from the inside.   Morse coding right now SOS.  An anxiety attack.  His shoulders are starting to shake, his chest is heaving, holding back his sobs.  Code Red.  Men don’t cry.   His head moves.  Left and then right, to see if anyone is watching him.  I am.  I’ll give you something to cry about soldier.  We discipline our own.  The missing man folds his arms across his chest.  Squeezes his biceps, his fingers digging trenches into them.  Silently ordering himself to “hold it together.”  Beat yourself up and stuff those emotions down.  Don’t loose it in a public place. The missing man’s shoulders are shaking harder.  Everyone is looking at the airplane formation and missing this man misfiring.  Breaking down in front of me.  Do something.  Help him.  I walked up and stood beside him, just close enough so my shoulder was touching his.  “Would you like a piece of gum?” I said.  Handing the pack of Beemans gum I kept in Buddy out to him.  Startled he slapped the tears off his face.  He didn’t say anything but his frame relaxed.  He didn’t just take one piece, he took the whole pack of Beemans.  Pascal’s Wager won.  Embarrassed, he turned his head away and looked up at the airplanes.  Silent still.  As he chewed a piece of gum I could hear his breathing slow down.  I stood completely still too.  It seemed like a long time until he spoke but it probably was less than a minute when he said, “It should have been me.”  The man standing next to me at Sun n Fun was missing the missing man and wanted to go with him.

Fighter pilots, fighting machines, Top Guns.  They can be the hardest to read.  Not the WWII veterans, they’re just happy to see their ‘old friend’ Stearman again.  The veterans who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq are the ones I find incredibly interesting to fly with.  Challenge coins, each one of them.   Many are postwar byproducts spring-loaded with PTSD symptoms.  Minutemen addicted to adrenaline and hotheads.  Being a flight instructor for so long, and an empath, I am pretty good at spotting them. They’re war horses, easily spooked.  If you’ve ever had horses, you know the best way to get a horse to let you approach is to calm yourself first.  When I saw their hands shaking, strapping themselves into the military harness without assistance, I would slow everything down. Become as calm of a presence as I could. They were full of anxiety about flying.   They had a love/hate relationship with airplanes that had nothing to do with me.  All CFI’s monitor the temperature of a flight.  The skilled ones regulate it.  I discovered a secret weapon that would lower their stress level and the temperature of the flight.  After I saw my Top Gun’s eyes, down and locked on the panel, staring at the instruments compulsively.  Overheating and sweating.  I would reach up and tickle him until he started to laugh.  In the WWII Stearman’s you can reach the front-seater and touch them.  It’s an interesting method of regulating a fighting machine, but it works.  I could feel them physically cool down once I got them to laugh. Laughing helps retrain the brain. Increases short-term memory and significantly decreases the stress hormone cortisol.  Laughter is proven to be very good medicine. The fighting machines came back from the flight lighter than when they left.

Beemans gum.  The gum of test pilots. The ones with The Right Stuff came home and after what they’ve been through, found everything changed.  The Boeing Stearman, Model 75 WWII trainer, was based on Lloyd Stearman’s Model 6 design.  The “Cloudboy.”  Boeing bought the Stearman Aircraft Factory and they changed the mission of the airplanes built there.  Flying machines became fighting machines.  If a little fabric Stearman trainer taught Cloudboy’s to go to war, it could teach them how to come home too.

A clocca is a clock.  A clock is a bell.  A bell marks a watch.  From the tower each hour, the Watchman calls, “All’s well.”   Wæccende, Boatman, remain awake.  Ships watch changes four quarters a day.  Thirty minutes, turn the double bubble upside down.  Second Dog Watch finished.  Eight bells and all is well.  First Watch has begun.  Not till the pendulum swing, did a second make the face.  Chronostasis took place.  Men put time in their pockets, chained to their vests. Shackled time to their wrist.  Wound themselves up by the crown with their free hand.  No longer Watchman standing watch.  They were just men, watching a clock.

I grew up in a house full of clocks. They all chimed at different times.  An 1820 Scottish longcase was the most emergent.  It’s loud quarter hour chimes, overpowered the petite floor clock painted with me and our Newfoundland on its face. The Cuckoo clock in the kitchen rang in when the Glockenspiel remembered to open the door.  The fancy French wall clock was wound daily, but snubbed time regularly.  The brown victorian clock of no origin, nagged at time from the top of the stairs.  The Wilson family clock did not work, just presided over our history.  Silently guarding the mantel and the hearth.  Every hour was a strange ticktocking, chiming in, all at different timing.  I own one clock, and it can be found in the left hand corner of Buddy’s panel.  A 1929 Pioneer Eight Day clock. It’s very rare and I spent years finding the exact one original to my plane.  I am fascinated with that clock.  It runs well but I never wind it.  When I fly, I just move the set of red hands to mark the time I start the engine.  That is the time my watch begins, and I become the Watchman who doesn’t wear a watch.

When I flew for commercial operators, flight was all about time.  Time out. Time off. Time on. Time in.  On schedule.  Behind schedule.  Ahead of schedule.  The measure of a flight was measured by time.  Flying the old planes is different.  You get there when you get there but you get there all the same.  The only presence of time in my cockpit is the red hands marking the start of the engine, and the fuel gauge telling me how long until I land.  There is a timelessness in this type of flying that is a tonic for people in a time obsessed society.  When I sold 30 minute flights, the only question I got about time was, “How much time do we have left?”  A question asked by my flier because they didn’t want the flight to end.  My flights aways ran over, at least 5 minutes.  I had so many hours of Stearman time by then, I felt I could share some extra time with them.  When we returned to the airport the pilots would run to get their logbook, or put the card with their flight time and my CFI signature in their wallets.  Tucked away for safe keeping until they could recount  it into their flight ledgers.  If time is money, then flight time is a gold standard.   A zeitgeber, “time-giver.”  I find it fascinating when I meet a flier, the qualifier they most often define themselves by is flight time.  How many flight hours they have, how long it’s been since they flew last, or how old they were when they started to fly.  Timing their timelines by tenths, spent in, or away from the sky.

I am enjoying being on Sarah time.  Living on the circadian clock of the islands and the lake. There are no working clocks in my cottage this summer, the only sign of time are the bells.  Westminster chimes; singing the song of St. Mary the Great and the Pugilist’s Tower across the lake.  I found myself looking forward to hearing the bells.  Waiting for them.  Then noticing their absence and wondering when they would ring again?  The bells echoing across the water were beautiful, but they were inconsistent.  Some half-hours they didn’t ring at all.  Some times they played a song.  When they chimed the time, they began on the 9’s instead of the 0’s. I began timing the bells to the atomic clock on my computer and trying to find a pattern. Was I in an acoustic shadow?   I like playing connect the dots.    Time to find the source.  I followed the sound of the carillon to the Community Church in town.  A pretty little church on a hill above the lake.  I didn’t see a bell tower.  I asked the Secretary about the church bells.  She didn’t know when they set the bells, or why they played what they did.  She did ask me,  “You do know they are electronic?”  No I did not, but I found it very ironic.  I had become a Kettle and Nob.   A Kettle is Cockney slang for a watch, its origin coming from the phrase, “A watched kettle never boils.”  The bells chimed in their own time, on their own clock.  But they did chime each day, all the same, and it was a joyful noise.  Maybe the seconds they’re early, or late, is extra time we can share on the lake.

Every pilot I’ve ever met, certificated or not, looks up each time a plane fly’s by.  The atomic clock stops for them when they hear the sound of an airplane engine.  They stop what they’re doing and watch that plane fly.  Watchman still, standing watch.  The sound of a plane, like a bell.  Reminding, Wæccende.  I am here.  All’s well.

Happy Fathers Day to all the Watchman.  Dad’s standing watch, guarding the mantel and the hearth.

In the years counting up to the time you start growing young again, it is easy to forget the worst thing that can happen to anyone is losing their first best friend. People worry about losing so many things, because people think they get to own everything, but that’s the best part of a friend.  Friends choose you and you choose them.

When I first met my first plane, it looked so much bigger than the only other Stearman I knew.  A faded Diana Creme and orange striped plane, that looked just plain. Her owner was my friend and anything but plain.   He was a successful pro athlete who had traded places with whom “he wished he could be,” to actually become it.  A professional barnstormer.  He gave me my first Stearman lessons off Kermit’s private grass strip after his customers had left for the night.  He told me if I could fly a Stearman, I could fly anything.  I loved flying his biplane.  It was light and gentle.  No weight to the controls, no stiffness in the throttle, and no break in the stall.  I named her Crème Puff and left pink lipstick kisses on her metal cowling.  My plane was different.  It wasn’t feminine at all; gleaming in Army blue and yellow military colors.  A stunning 1943 PT-17.  The 111th Stearman Pete Jones restored at AirRepair and given the buzz number 111 by the builder.

A Stearman was a sentimental and dangerous choice for someone with 7 hours of tailwheel time and I was afraid of it.  I was right to be.    My few hours of tailwheel time were not at all compensated by my 3000+ hours of airplane time. While I had flown all types of aircraft, from pistons to jets, I had never really learned how to fly.  My boyfriend at the time Chuck, an unflappable lover of tailwheel airplanes, was the second set of training wheels in my front seat.  Another man who had traded places with whom “he wished he could be,” to actually become it.  A professional warbird pilot.  While both tailwheel teachers had very different styles, they had one thing in common.  They were both way over six feet tall.  Giant guardians of me, blocking any bit of forward visibility with their broad shoulders.  If I complained, they’d prop their arms over the sides of the cockpit cowling and make what little I could see, completely disappear.  I learned quickly not to complain.

Chuck and I left Brandywine, PA on June 11, 2005 to bring my Stearman back to Lakeland, FL.  I said, “This plane is trying to kill me,”  again and again on the trip.   It wasn’t trying to kill me, it was trying to tell me something.  Years of poor pilot technique and neglect had created a pretty unhappy biplane. The plane was definitely a “he” and I named him Blu on the trip home.  His shiny exterior was a veneer, hiding all the things wrong within him.  333 hours on his engine in 11 years wasn’t nearly enough.  One hour before we landed in Lakeland, the rear main bearing went out.  His Continental W670 engine was making metal.  It would have to be taken off, driven to AirRepair in Chuck’s truck, and rebuilt.  A month later, he had an engine with the improved roller bearing.  Next was the gear.  Blu had toe-in and wasn’t rigged right.  Darting, every which way, on take off and landing.  The brakes were mounted wrong.  The scissor-bushings were cracked.  His magneto timing was off.  The worst was the “Continental Cough.”  That was when we had our come-to-Jesus-talk.  Blu would just up and quit on me.  The engine would suddenly stop, then start back up again, with no change of power.  I never knew when it was going to happen. That was NOT allowed and I told him so.  “If I go down you go down.  I can’t fix you if you keep scaring the hell out of me, so cut it out.”   Blu was a mess.  With each failure we fixed him.  I became a self taught Plane Whisperer, explaining things wrong in “Sarah speak” to the best A&P’s in the business.  I flew him back to AirRepair to get his annual inspection early. Had Pete do every possible improvement at great expense.  We flew together on an engine that never missed or failed after that. Then hung a second engine after we had run 1400 hours together on the first.  What I didn’t learn, until after our first year together, was Blu had been totaled in a mid-air collision.  He was a ball of metal, wood, and human flesh embedded into the ground of a duster strip in Mississippi.  Nothing of the original plane remained except the registration paperwork when he was built in 1994.  Planes mirror people in extraordinary ways.  Blu’s physical form had been restored but his history remained.  I learned to operate him with skill and grace and he learned to trust that I would take the very best care of him. Something no pilot had ever done.  We became best friends and two parts of a whole after that first year.  I knew exactly why that plane found me and why I found him.

I sold Blu out of fear.  Fear I would not have enough money to keep him.  Fear I was not big enough to care for two planes in the final years of Buddy’s restoration.  I have no regrets except that one.  Fear.  Everything I have done; that may have been stupid, spontaneous, or even reckless was a decision motivated by love.  But selling Blu was a knee jerk response to fear.  The antithesis of what flying is all about.  I hated every moment of the transition and hated myself for selling.  I sat in the hangar with Blu for weeks, talking.  Promising I would get him back soon.  Blu didn’t believe me but he had never met anyone like me.  I’ve had an army of pilots reporting on my plane’s well-being ever since.  There is a brotherhood among vintage aircraft owners that runs deep.

On the last day of May, I woke up at 4am, and started Googling Blu’s N-number.  My intuition said he was for sale.  I had to get my friend.  Blu was sold and about to be ferried to the new owner in Texas.  Robbie Vajdos was the ferry pilot, a good stick, and one of the brotherhood.  Blu was in safe hands for the moment.  On June 11, ten years to the date I flew him home from Pennsylvania,  I called Robbie to see how I could get my plane back.  Robbie said he had an idea that might work but not sure.  Buy another Stearman for the new owner, give me time to raise the money, and be back on the 29th.  Perfect timing.  I have no idea if the deal will work out or if I can support two planes.  I have far less money than I did then.  The thousands of people I flew in Blu’s front seat have defined me, and him.  Buddy can’t do that.  He was designed for a different mission.  He’s a show plane, not a trainer, and I miss teaching tailwheel.

Are we the sum of who we care for, or is who we care for the sum of who we are?  I have struggled to be anything but my planes.  Something apart, a separate entity with my own identity.  Maybe that’s just a battle between ego and me.  Could I be anything greater than the sum of the people I help to fly?  People who contact me year after year, telling me how flight changed their life.  Healed a wound, erased a fear, gave them a deep connection with joy and freedom.  Is what defines Flight Instructors what defines planes?   A vehicle to lift a human spirit.  Friends chose you and you choose them. You and I have something important to continue together and neither of us can do it without the other one. We’ve missed each other so.

Twelve months gathered around the Thanksgiving table, each one was asked to say why they were grateful and what they brought to share.  Sitting by their friends, in cliques of seasons, winter began. December fell frozen in thought, “I am grateful to have been a Lifeguard Pilot. I share all the lives I saved.”  I raced through eight-day weeks and twenty-five hour nights, declaring priority with people coding in my hull, to bring broken bodies back to safety.  January rang in resolutely, “I am grateful to have been a Co-pilot.  I share all the assistance I gave.”  Your right seat companion, your second set of eyes, I thought thoughts before you said them.  Privileged to be your partner in flight.  February smiled seductively and blew a kiss across the table, tracing a heart in its breath.  “I am grateful I have been a passenger.  I share all the admiration I gave.”  A sleepy head on your shoulder, I looked up at you starry-eyed.  I couldn’t imagine the courage it took to be a pilot.  You made me feel so safe I lost all fear of flying, flying with you.

Spring broke in, shifting seats and changing positions.  March roared, “I am grateful I have been an explorer.  I share all the freedom I gave.”  I traveled the world as an endurance flier, a barnstormer, a bush pilot, a record setter.  I sought for the sake of seeking.  Broke rules, raced space and time, risked my life in search of something I knew was there but had yet to find.  April stood and danced around the table.  “I am grateful I have been a tailwheel pilot. I share all the grace I gave.”  Gliding across grass, I waltzed with the wind.  Cashmere coated currents and chiffon covered wings swayed in sync to Nature’s lead.  I learned how to enchant the aircraft with the dance of my feet.  May leaned in and wagged a finger at March and April. “If you ever filed a flight plan, or followed the airways, it would be easier for me to watch out for you.”   Relaxing back into its seat May said seriously, “I am grateful I have been an instrument pilot. I share all the patience I gave.”  The tortoise to your wild hare, as constant as time, I scanned things seen and unseen clockwise.  Half wizard – half tactician, I put chaos in its place.  Prioritizing speed, sink, and distance, I forecasted the future of each flight by calculating the trends of the instruments.

Summer warmed the conversation and June bubbled up out of the blue.  “I am grateful I have been a seaplane pilot.  I share the harmony I gave.”  A union of air and water, visible and invisible currents combined as one come alive.  The lapping of water on the fuselage, the reel of step taxi turns, the rush of waves colliding with amphibious wings.  You completely swept me off my wheels.  July sat on the fence deliberating, lost in the middle of the year.  “I am grateful I have been an ATP.  I share all the knowledge I gave and had yet to learn.”   At the pinnacle of my profession I was humbled by the challenges I faced.  Sworn to protect my passengers, I picked my path through the storms. Trusting I would find the wisdom and perseverance to bring us all safely home.  August whispered sweetly in July’s ear, “I am grateful for you. I am just a student pilot and need you to guide me. I share all the humility I gave.”   I tried and failed.  Sent a thousand wrong transmissions.  Crash landed, face-planted on the runway, and got up and tried again and again. With each failure I sought your approval. I wanted to grow up and be like you.

It fell on fall to speak last.  The most brilliant of all seasons, September wanted to impress and jumped up on its chair.  “I am grateful to have had a first flight.  I share all the wonder I found there.”   Every inch of me tingled, jingled, glittered, quivered, imploded then exploded on my first flight.  I couldn’t believe my senses could feel so alive.  You changed my life.   October rose and stood shoulder to shoulder with September.  “I am grateful to have been a Pilot.  I share all the pride I hold inside.”   A feat so great, once earned it cannot be taken away. The FAA can take your medical, your certificate, even your right to fly.  Once a Pilot, you are a Pilot for the rest of your life.  November asked the seasons to stand in solidarity together. “I am grateful I have been a Flight Instructor.”  You started with me and you end with me.  You doubted everything I said from the first day we spoke. I knew someday you would see what I saw in you.  Even if you didn’t choose me as your CFI, I believed in you. “I brought all the inspiration I gave to share.”  A Thanksgiving toast to us!  “Here’s to the hearts and minds we won, the hopes we signed off on, and the certificate’s we risked to make dreams come true.  It is better to give things others will be thankful for, than just to be thankful for what has been given to you.”

The sun’s been up all day waiting for you. Climb up here and sit on my lap, there’s something I want to tell you.  Let’s buckle you up, under my belt. Now put your hands on the stick and fly along with me.  See that cloud up there?  The fluffy one with the big nose, that’s puffing in and out.  It’s smelling you.  It thinks you smell like peanut butter and baby shampoo.  Your turn, pick a cloud and breathe in.  What do you smell? Don’t be embarrassed, no one can hear you up here.  “Rain?”  Good.  What else? Use your imagination, breathe in again and tell me what you smell?  “Puppy breathe.”  Excellent!  Guess what I smell?  Chalk, let me tell you why.

Once upon a time there was a Renaissance, a Golden Age of Aviation.  Airplanes were brand new then and what people could do with them was as unlimited as your imagination.  Each one was made by hand, because of that each one was unique and perfect – just like all children.  Then a war came and they started making planes all the same on an assembly line.  Not that those planes are bad.  All planes are marvelous machines, capable of doing miraculous things – just like all people.  But when the planes started to look the same, we left something behind on the assembly line.  Imagination.  Aviation needs children to survive because dreams begin in children’s eyes.  Someday this will be yours, well it already is.  I put your name on the registration the day you were born.  I’ve never loved anything as much as flying, until I saw you.  The sky loves you as much as I do.

The sky loves you so much it sends the clouds down to the ground at night to collect all the tears in the world. Then the clouds take them up to the sky to be dried. Clouds hold millions of tiny tears inside. Clouds carry all the tears of sadness and gladness, which are both good.  Everyone needs a good cry.  When dried, each good tear has a dream inside. Good tears make the white fluffy clouds that stretch and yawn across the sky. They’re the clouds you see floating by that remind you of your house, or your dog, or your best friend.  Those clouds smell like chalk because they hold your imagination for you forever, even if you’ve forgotten to look up at them. The sky still loves you long after you’ve grown up, but sends stronger clouds down to collect the tears of adults.  Adults’ tears change when they grow up, adults start to cry tears of shame. Tears of shame are the only bad tears to cry.  They hold all the could’ve’s, the would’ve’s, all of the might’ve been’s that grown-up’s hold inside. Those tears can’t be dried, so they are taken up to have the dreams restored in the sky.  Clouds that clean the tears of adults are dark inside, and the darkest clouds are the Cumulonimbus Giants of the sky. They’re the ones you see towering and glowering, bubbling and boiling, scrubbing shame out harder and higher.  The Giants of the sky aren’t terrible, they’re just very tired.  After all it’s a giant job cleaning up everyone’s tears for all those years. When the Giants are done they go to sleep, resting in the sky, and the Giants become gentle again.  Once all the tears are squeaky clean and sparkling with dreams, the sky sends the tears down as rain to grow the garden of children.

If you saved every word you said in the air, what would your story be?  Starting as a student pilot, childish words skip out of your mouth and trip over your microphone. Stubbing your mind just trying to say – who you are, where you are, and what you want to do.  Your flight instructor, always correcting and editing your transmissions, has sent you on a solo flight. Tongue twisted, finger shaking, afraid to push to talk – you wait.  Blushing and rushing through each phrase in your memory bank, you race to catch up with your words before they runaway with your thoughts. Finally you transmit, and a novel pours out of you. “Silence,” A mysterious voice interrupts. “The airwaves are full of pilots telling their stories.  We only have slots for four words per pilot, per lifetime. Choose carefully the words you choose to say.”  Picking up your courage from the piles of emotions scattered around your head.  Sifting through your thoughts, you go digging for the perfect word.  A word reaches up, like an outstretched hand, lifting your tongue up off its knees to speak.  A word so soft, it whispered right by your mind and out the other side, before you noticed it had been there all the time.  You open your mouth, press the switch, close your eyes, and leap.  “Fly.”  And so the first word of a pilot’s story is written in the sky.

Well-seasoned from seasons of flying, you’ve saved stacks of words and lined them up alphabetically on the shelves of your mind.  Reviewing each, section by section, carefully pulling down just the right one to take on the perfect flight.  Confident you’ve got it all mind mapped out, you tuck the next word you’ll say under the cover of your tongue for safekeeping.  Then the perfect flight hits you out of the blue sky, sending your spirit reeling.  Every word you’ve ever lined up for the occasion pales in comparison to the pink salt sunset you just flew through.  Terrified and twisted up inside.  Choking on the wrong word chosen, you word-boot your own behind in a Heimlich motion.  Suddenly words you’ve never said before start tumbling out of you.  Aweburned, Skysmacked, Aircrowned, Cloudbathed.  You take a recess from your mind to search outside for a word that nearly describes what you’re feeling inside.  A mysterious voice cuts in,  “Aircraft calling unreadable. Say what you’re feeling.”  Suddenly set free from thinking what to say, a feeling floats up to the roof of your mouth and is exhaled into the air, “Flying.” And so the second word of a pilot’s story is written in the sky.

There comes a time, in a pilot’s timeline, when you have more names in your address book of comrades dead then alive. Staring into the silence in front of you, trying on which dark words to wear.  You want to throw them all away and hang it up.  Maybe three is your lucky number?  Quit while you’re still alive.  Say, “flew or flown,” and be done. No one around to listen to your stories anymore anyway.  Despair shakes the roots of your soul and shoots out of your limbs. Reaching towards the push to talk, you resign to quit.  A mysterious voice intervenes before you can transmit. “8:13am Lost contact with AA11.” You’re a pilot.  You’ve heard the tapes and think you know all the words in-between.  A story of a flight ending on 9/11. Our family hijacked, a dream kidnapped, and the breaking of our industry.  Why listen? You know it will end with a shootdown order given.  But that’s not what you hear next.  A voice of a different kind, a fellow traveller speaks over the airwaves, “Hey, I got two stranded pilots standing next to my cab, lookin to hitch a ride anywhere closer to home.  Who can give them a lift?” A true story.  Suddenly your headset explodes with CB chatter.  Truckers fighting over who would be chosen to divert from their routes to deliver the two pilots home to safety. Lights glowing in the night. The universe stepping in.  Travellers giving aid and shelter to other travellers in times of trouble.  An act of kindness so deeply rooted in our family tree, it is as old as time itself. The fighter pilot spirit in you reignites, and you resolve to fight your way all the way down to the ground.  So much flight left in your life yet, you will not define your future by living in a past tense.  A battle cry breaks your heart wide-open and cries defiantly into the night, “Flier.” And so the third word of a pilot’s story is written in the sky

Old, gray, sky wrinkled and wind chapped, you’re surrounded by loved ones at the end of your life.  Holding every hand in the air circling your bed with love and light.  A story of a pilot’s life summed up in perfect simplicity – all excess stripped away. “Fly, flying, flier.” Only one word left to say.  Like a child’s plea to pick them up.  Two throttle cracked and stick calloused hands rise up into the air.  An infinity symbol of hope, a lazy eight circling back to never end.  Smiling you say, “FLY.”  And so a pilot’s story begins at the beginning again.

There is a door in my front seat, a Gibb door, streamlined and finely crafted.  A secret passage.  If closed, it’s hidden along the sleek physique of my plane. I leave it open, like an open invitation. Nothing is as welcoming as an open-cockpit biplane with an open door.  A leather strapped hinged hug swings out to greet you. A crooked smile spreads across the face of the fuselage of my plane.  Grinning wing to wing. Welcome back. Welcome home. Climb in, buckle up. Take my hand, take the stick. How long has it been?  I can’t wait to show you around the sky.  Let’s fly over there, that’s the view I’ve been waiting to share with you. Hang your head over the side.  Sit awhile and visit the wind with me. Look how gently the wind runs its fingers across the lake.  See it combing through the corn rows, untangling the knots in the wheat?  The branches of the trees in the orchard are waving.  The wood smoke rising above the meadow is signaling.  Watch the wind write a timeline of where it’s been.  Still waters next to the shore of the lake, telling tailwheel’s tales of where to safely land.

Let’s fly over there, that’s the experience I’ve been waiting to share with you. Hang your head over the side. Sit awhile and smell the sky with me. Close your eyes and open your senses. The sky’s made something special for you.  Breathe in the golden delicious air, ripe with fall scents. Musky wet wool, lavender, pine, harvest chaff, and sage rise up to feed you.  Sweet and savory combined on a pilot’s palate.  A sensory buffet, a sky feast awaits.  Different than summer, the air of fall is rich and thick.  It spreads like cinnamon oil, warming and tingling, lingering on your skin. Soothing salve of aromatic air, protecting you from the frost that chaps your lips and cracks your wings.

Let’s fly over there, that’s the secret I’ve been waiting to share with you. Hang your head over the side.  Sit awhile and visit the land with me. Feel the city as it approaches?  Feel how unstable the air is, getting knocked around, pounded up and down by all the pavement?  Feel the country as it approaches?  Feel how stable the air is, gentle currents rising and falling through the warm lifts on pastures and the cool sinks on the lakes?  Now look down, deep into the face of the ground. I have something you need to see.  Our backyard is not the same. See how the sun tends to the wounds of the land?  Its light, like white bandages, smooth the cuts and bruises inflicted by civilization.  An oxymoron, as if civilizing any place is achieved by clearcutting its wild spaces and scaring its skin. Pilots have a very special view. Don’t look away, look in.

Let’s fly over there, I’ve saved the best for last.  Hang your head over the side. Take me up high, we’re going to play with the sky. I’ll teach you how to do lazy eights the Stearman way.  It’s all about pitch and very little bank.  Wingover’s and roller coaster’s, steep turns and chandelles, dutch-rolling down to the ground to chase our shadow.  Let me show you the most beautiful thing you’ve never seen.  You.  Look how you light up when you fly.  Twenty years I’ve been a CFI, still the most beautiful view is watching a pilots’ eyes reignited in flight.  Welcome back.  Welcome home. We missed you. Like a porch light with no off switch, a pilot’s light never goes out. The light glowing inside pilots’ eyes can never be extinguished. Once dimmed, embers deep within, glow back to life when fanned by the open door of an airplane.

A logbook lays in a box on my hangar floor in the company of things I keep to remind me of where I’ve been. Leather bound lines sit silently in past tense, present yet. Not updated for years, this linear ledger is left unfinished.  A cypher waiting to be broken, you might wonder why it stopped when it did? I know the key.  A foreigner, I arrived in the New Land of old planes and my world changed.  Like an immigrant landing on Ellis Island, I was given the chance to begin my history again.  Set free to explore in my Stearman that first summer, I saw undiscovered beauty in the air like second sight.  Learning to fly my open-cockpit biplane allowed me to have another first flight.  With great freedom comes great responsibility.  I wanted to record what I had found for people who were not free to chase their dreams.  When I went to write, confining bars confronted me. The logbook I had kept for over a decade looked like a leather bound cage.  How could I fit on a single black line what it felt like to land my Stearman in a clover covered field of butterflies?  Where was the space big enough to log a life-altering experience?  Never one to settle for status quo, I question why everything is what it is.

Were my flights merely a census statistic? A legal document documenting my Captain’s decisions.  No.

Were my flights just a measurement of time and distance?  Metered out like so many knots in a mariners chip log line to estimate the speed of my vessel. No.

Do I log love, and gratitude, and joy in tenths?  Dividing my heart between invisible state lines like a mathematical percentage. No.

Is safely landing on the side of a closed runway, before the fist of a summer storm slammed into me, logged as second in command?  Would there be room to write how my eyes were bruised with tears after I saw the power of prayer and thunderstorms first hand?  No.

Am I accumulating hours in the air to impress? Fighting antiquated standards to merely meet the currency requirements of a bourgeois FAA bureaucracy. No.

A logbook cannot begin to write the stories of my pilot’s skies if kept in captivity.  Epic stories of pride, of awe, of fear, of bliss.  How is there enough space on a single black line for this?  A rule breakers blood runs through the roots of my wild Irish hair, and whips in the face of conformity. I needed to help my logbook break free. The ripples of possibility set off a hurricane of questions.  What if a women, an artist, had designed the first logbook?  Like a Butterfly Effect, the flutter of gentle wings brushing away confining lines might change everything about how pilot’s leave their legacy. Couldn’t a logbook be anything we wanted it to be?

A Journal.  An open expression of hope, reminding us each take-off is best made from a new blank page letting us begin again.

A  Canvas.  A colorful handcrafted frame waiting for hours of art to be laid down on linen, flying memories ribbed stitched together by an artist’s hand.

A Scrapbook.  A free flowing unlined archive, holding snap pockets of mementos, menus, souvenirs, and pictures that line the flight bags of pilot’s lives.

A Songbook.  A composition of video and audio from the sounds and sights of each flight.  A folksong singing you to sleep at night listening to the voices of home.

Erasing the furrowed lines from my logbook’s worried brow, I was free to replace them with the limitless horizon of unlimited possibilities. Explorers together, my plane and I made a pact. We would collect beautiful pictures, and poems, and pieces of earth and sky.  Sharing our shared stories anyway we pleased. Meticulous logs are kept on his hobbs, while I am free to forget time and never wear a watch. There are poets, and artists, and filmmakers, and explorers locked in conformities cages. I see you hiding behind your mirrored aviators, thinking about how to leave your legacy.  My hands shook like yours the day I published my logbook and bared my soul.  A quick sketch of my unsure hand lays on the cover of my first journal, to remind me of where I’ve been. Anyone who has lived in captivity sees the freedom to fly differently.  Each minute of it is precious so you learn to fight for its survival.  Be brave. Question everything.  Believe you can influence change in aviation that’s long overdue.