Have you ever tried to explain to others why you fly, what it is that makes entering the sky so magical? Most of us have, but we usually fall short in trying to put our passion for flight into words.
Authors like Richard Bach, Ernest Gann, John Gillespie Magee, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry have come close to capturing the essence of flight in their prose, but even these masterful poets do not necessarily describe what we feel in our hearts.
Recently, however, I found additional words to help explain our love affair with wings. After downloading some messages from Avsig, an aviation computer forum on CompuServe, I read an uplifting message from George Braly, an Ada, Oklahoma, attorney who flies a turbocharged 1967 Beechcraft V35 Bonanza. In it, he described his most recent flight:
"Hot and heavy, we struggled off the ground at Tucson and climbed to 17,500 feet for the flight home. Halfway to El Paso and at sunset, we were confronted by an immense cold front that fortunately was doing its mischief well below our altitude.
"It was one of those enchanting evenings that only aviators are privileged to experience. The world was aglow in soft pink and warm red hues that reflected from pristine pillars of cloud and fresh-fallen snow that blanked the ground miles below.
"We quickly called Albuquerque Center for a clearance to climb into Class A airspace. Minutes later, we were in perfectly clear air at Flight Level 190, heading toward a wall of cloud with the setting sun perfectly behind the tail. Dragon Lady [the name given by Braly to his airplane] was purring turbine-smooth.
"But then a faint glimmering and an irregularly pink, red, and blue shape began to form on the cloud directly ahead of us, the cloud into which we would certainly and momentarily become swallowed.
"As we approached the glory and thought that it could not possibly become any more spectacular, it parted in the middle and there appeared — dead ahead — a perfect and rapidly growing shadow-outline of the fabled V-tail Bonanza. It was cast by the setting sun on the face of the cloud and framed by a brilliant multicolored halo.
"Then, in little more time than it took for each of us to gasp and utter some irrelevant exclamations, poof! We had burst through our shadow, entered the glory, and it was gone. Never have I seen such beauty before, nor likely shall I ever again. It was one of those perfect moments, shared with friends forever."
Braly's commentary was well received on Avsig. It caused me and probably many others to reflect on some of the wonders we had witnessed during our airborne communions with nature.
It reminded me of a low-level flight in a Cessna 180 across Europe on a spectacular winter day in 1963. It was like sailing across the pages of history, feasting on castles, cultures, and contrast.
Nor shall I forget my first flight to Masada, the monolithic fortress adjacent to the Dead Sea in Israel. As I spiraled about that ancient pylon in a Piper Cherokee at night under the illumination of a full moon, I found myself 1,900 years behind flight plan, so realistic was my reverie about what had occurred there in 67 A.D.
More recently, my crew and I had departed St. Louis at sunset in a Lockheed 1011, solid instruments in a 320-knot climb. I could sense that we were approaching the top of the thick, dense cloud layer because of the way in which the ambient light was increasing. Anticipating our breakout on top, I quickly asked Kansas City Center for a temporary block that would allow us to vary altitude between 12,000 and 16,000 feet msl.
Permission was received just as the Lockheed poked its nose out of the undercast and into a world I had never seen before. Orange streaks of diaphanous cirrus had been paint-brushed by a cosmic artist across a lavender dome. A portion of the sun's disc peered above the aft horizon and spread a pastel pink afterglow on the cotton-candy blanket that hid the earth.
I gently lowered the nose of the airplane, a giant porpoise now descending for a swim in a heavenly sea of air. We hugged and followed the undulating pink dunes like a cartographer's pen tracing terrain. We accelerated to the barber pole (redline) and brushed the tops with our belly for 3 or 4 minutes, meandering here and there to avoid damaging one of His castles.
The indescribable beauty of nature's handiwork and the sensation of speed made us feel ecstatic and humbled, but not a word was uttered on the flight deck. We knew instinctively that such a sound would surely have tarnished the moment.
As the sun slid from view and the pink dissolved into gray, I gradually nudged the porpoise skyward and into a maximum-angle climb. At almost 10,000 fpm, the tops fell away rapidly, and the sun rose briefly for the second time that day. A full moon reflecting white gold rose on the eastern horizon as if to greet the approaching nightfall.
The experience gave me a chill. There is no way to share this with someone who does not fly, no way at all. It seems to me that a mental catalogue of such events helps to explain why the airman is compelled to return to the sky. It inspires us, the lucky few, with an embracing passion for flight that wingless earthlings cannot fathom.
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