We take off from Tri-Cities Airport in Bristol, Tennessee, after the sun has set. It is Deborah's leg to fly, so she is in the left seat, I in the right. In the evening twilight she climbs our 1969 Cessna 182 to 7,500 feet to catch the southwest wind. In minutes we are clipping along to the northeast, up the great Appalachian Mountain valley at 155 knots.
Despite the brisk tailwind, the air is smooth, the ride sublime. Soon the daylight fades, leaving a sea of lights below us and an ocean of stars above. A sliver of moon hangs in the western sky. The visibility this third evening in January is crystal clear, at least 60 miles.
The engine hums sweetly. Deb dims the intimate red glow of the cockpit lights so that we can see outside with more clarity. I use the little spotlight above my right leg to identify towns and cities on the sectional chart while monitoring our progress up the valley on the handheld GPS.
Pulaski, Virginia, comes into view, then Blacksburg, with Roanoke beyond. This is the last leg of our Christmas adventure. Late in the afternoon of December 26 we had left Baltimore, heading west, flying between a cloud deck and snow-covered Allegheny ridges. We made it to Charleston, West Virginia, before darkness and weather ahead put us on the ground.
The next morning, snow was falling — wet, sloppy stuff from a low, gray sky. I talked to the girl at the FBO's desk about putting our Skylane in a hangar to thaw when the snow stopped.
She consulted her rate sheet. "It's $50 for the first hour and $40 for each additional hour," she informed me, with her face deadpan.
I thought that she was kidding. "We don't need the whole hangar," I said. "Just a few square feet of it."
"Those are our rates," she said primly, fluttering the rate sheet in front of me.
I couldn't believe my ears. "You charge $490 to hangar a 182 for 12 hours overnight?"
"Oh, no. Overnight is $100."
We bit the bullet and put the airplane inside. I hope that it enjoyed the experience. The folks at the Marriott downtown charged us only $69 for the night.
The following afternoon we began icing up over eastern Kansas, so we shot the approach into Manhattan, the Little Apple. The town was abuzz — the Kansas State Wildcats were going to a bowl game. The FBO charged us $25 for an unheated hangar overnight and, the next morning, threw in a free preheat.
Tonight over the Shenandoah Valley I smile as I remember that morning. Half the people in Manhattan were clamoring aboard chartered airliners for the trip to Arizona to watch the Wildcats. It was fun being at their party.
Life is a party, someone once said. Perhaps some of the time, I think. And little airplanes take you there.
Deborah points out Staunton and Harrisonburg, Virginia, in the glistening blackness. She dials the radio to 123.0 and clicks the mic five times. The runway and approach lights at Shenandoah Valley Regional magically appear, and she laughs.
Over eastern Colorado the wind had sculpted the snow around the bales of hay still lying in the fields. Thousands of bales, each with a plume of snow trailing away to the southeast. We flew west at a thousand feet, bucking the wind, making just a hundred knots over the ground.
At Colorado Springs the FBO charged us $40 to put the airplane in a heated hangar overnight. Room rate downtown: $69.
Deborah had a big laugh the next day when the clearance delivery person asked me at what altitude I wanted to cruise, and I said 6,000. "I don't think you can get that low," she said, smiling broadly. Field elevation in the Springs is 6,184 feet. I settled on 7,500.
Flying through La Veta Pass west of Walsenburg, Colorado, is always a hoot. The cones of the Spanish Peaks lie to the south, and a hulking 14,345-foot monster, Blanca Peak, to the north. The wind funnels through the high pass from the west; we went through at 11,500, looking up at the peaks, the little Rajay turbo chuffing away, our airplane dancing in the thin air.
The air was smooth again on the western side of the pass, in the San Luis Valley. We flew into New Mexico, turned south, flew by Taos, Los Alamos, and Santa Fe, then angled for Albuquerque.
The GPS gave us a course from Albuquerque direct to Tucson, 227 miles over some of the roughest, most gorgeous country in the United States. And it was full of snow. National Guard C-130s were busy dropping hay to stranded cattle, although we didn't see any of that on the afternoon of our flight. We saw forested mountains, desert flats, craggy cliffs — spectacular country — as our small airplane hummed along with us shoulder to shoulder in the cockpit, watching the scene change slowly.
That sense that you have a private seat at an extraordinary performance is part of the magic of general aviation. Tonight over the Shenandoah I get that feeling again. Off to my right I can just see the glow of Washington, D.C., a thin line of light on the horizon. Towns and villages are so clear that one is tempted to reach out and touch. Below me, headlights of vehicles make I-81 a ribbon of light that snakes its way around the villages and towns ahead until it finally fades into the darkness.
At Las Cruces, New Mexico, the man who pumped the gas also filled out the credit-card slip. His clothes were grease-stained, his hair unkempt, his hands work-hardened and rough. He had his troubles getting the electronic authorization, then he filled out the credit-card receipt with meticulous precision.
"You don't have to fill that thing out completely," I offered, trying to save some time. "Just put in the numbers."
"If it isn't exactly right," he replied, "I'll hear it from Mom." His mother owns the FBO.
Deborah winked at me, and I went back to watching him fill out the receipt.
The Big Bend section of Texas was new to both of us. No trees there. Reddish dirt and naked rock rose to peaks near 8,000 feet; every ranch — and there weren't many — had its own airstrip. A bleak, dry, desolate country, and spectacular.
Everywhere we fly in this wide country we see airplanes tied down. They sit forlornly in their shackles, rocking ever so gently in the wind, waiting faithfully. How often do people break down the tiedowns, fire up the engines, and wing away over mountain and plain to see what lies beyond?
How often do you go?
All you need is a few days. The whole nation is out there — one of the most grand, diverse landforms on the planet, and it is waiting for you.
We live in an extraordinary time and place: People of modest means can own magic carpets that will take them anywhere they wish to go. Watch The Weather Channel and go where the weather isn't. Your aerial odyssey may be the high point of your year. While life and health last, don't waste them.
Tonight we make the turn over Charles Town, West Virginia, and fly toward Frederick, Maryland. We can see the lights of Baltimore ahead. Over Mt. Airy, Deborah calls Baltimore Approach and begins her descent.
The city is a canvas of light, infinite points of light, in all kinds of patterns — random, linear, swirls, with the veins and arteries of traffic flowing everywhere. How many of the millions of people who live here have seen this city from the sky at night? When I fly in on an airliner, it seems that I am the only one with his nose glued to the window; everyone else is reading or tapping on a computer or talking to his or her seatmate. Tonight Deborah flies the airplane and I sit in awe. The air is so smooth that it seems we are flying in a dream.
She squeaks the wheels on. We are home after 32 hours of flying.
Walking across the ramp, she tells me, "Flying at night is so special." After a bit she adds, "I like to fly."
Yeah. So do I.
Novelist Stephen Coonts and his wife own four airplanes. His next book, Fortunes of War, will be published in May. Information about the book can be found at Coonts' Web site ( www.coonts.com).
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