The whole field now was filled with youngsters jumping up and down and waving and shouting. Uncle Dan circled above us, flying as low as he could. Then he tipped his wing to us, a final salute, and flew off toward Lily Lake, the airport pond.
We returned to our game, adrenaline pumping in our veins, especially in the Hoolihan veins. Among our friends, we lived in one of the smallest houses. But that was our uncle who had just tipped his wing to us.
In this memory, which is really a series of memories, my feet are planted firmly on the ground. Yet the way Uncle Dan could just get in his airplane and fly anywhere made the wider world feel accessible. He flew and landed on lakes all over Canada and the United States to sell grease to mining companies. In the winter he put skis on his plane and flew to his camp deep in the Ontario wilderness to put up ice for the icehouse. He once told me about taking off from camp when it was 50 degrees below zero. It took two blowtorches to warm the engine. "The cold air gives great lift, though, great lift," he said, his arm lifting to demonstrate.
The property he bought in Canada beckoned to him from the air almost 50 years ago. A long stretch of sand beach, perfect for pulling a seaplane up on. Sometime in the 1960s he bought the land and began to fly in guys and supplies to build the camp. Now there are two storage sheds, an icehouse (with authentic chunks of lake ice buried in sawdust), a fish house, and the camp itself. Nothing fancy: open shelves in the kitchen; bunk beds; a wood stove; a cooking stove; a pump at the sink.
Every summer from the time I was 10 until my twenties, my parents drove our station wagon as far as Atikoken, Ontario. Uncle Dan met us on a small lake nearby and flew us to camp, in two loads, for our annual week of wilderness life. We swam, fished, picked blueberries, longed to see moose, and worried about seeing bear. Full moons out on Mabel Lake, with nobody else around, just a ring of trees and water, were spectacular. I developed a deep and abiding love for wilderness thanks to Uncle Dan and his floatplane.
Sometimes he would come over to our house and ask if any of us wanted to go flying. Out we'd go to the airport and up into the sky to check out our hometown from the air. I could pick out Deer Lake, the turquoise one north of town. Once, when my siblings and I were staying at a nearby resort with our children, Uncle Dan landed and took all of our children up for rides. That time, he had small squares of duct tape smattered all over the plane. "Hail damage," he informed us casually. Every small hail dent had been covered with that gray tape. My brother told me about a month later that the FAA had caught wind of the duct tape and grounded his airplane until he replaced the Ceconite fabric. My brother and I looked at each other, gulped, and then grinned. And to think, we had sent our children up in that plane!
That's the kind of trust I have always had in my uncle and particularly in his flying. Incredibly skilled, smooth, he has never had an accident in more than 50 years of flying. Last summer, Uncle Dan met me and my children and several other family members on Perch Lake outside of Atikokan. We were just unloading our gear from the car when we heard the Stinson beyond the trees. We stopped what we were doing and watched. A floatplane landing is a beautiful sight. The spray swooshed up on either side as the airplane gracefully slid onto the water. There's a moment of contact, when the long floats switch from riding air to riding water, that makes all things seem possible. It's a movement from fluid air to buoyant water. An airplane held up by currents and windstream is suddenly, almost magically, a water voyager.
When we flew out of camp days later, I sat in back with my son, Kelly, in my lap. After the long, slow, meditative positioning of the plane in front of a long stretch of water, all of us gazing at the wild, unpopulated beauty around us, Uncle Dan pulled both doors closed and revved the engine. The propeller went into a dizzying spin and my son plugged his ears as we moved full speed across the water. There's the arc of white spray on either side, the majestic view speeding by the window, and then, liftoff! Suddenly, we were airborne, riding currents of air and wind and mystery, rising higher and higher over the trees.
Behind my sunglasses, tears fell down my cheeks. I wept for the sheer beauty of flight, with regret that I hadn't flown much with my uncle in my busy adult life. In memory of all the joyful flights in and out of this special Canadian camp with him. I wondered if it might be the last time I flew out with Uncle Dan as the pilot. It was an incredibly beautiful August day, and I felt wildly lucky to be airborne with my pilot uncle in the eighty-second year of his life.
I also wondered that day why it had never occurred to me to learn to fly. All my life I have loved flying in small airplanes. It's an incredibly intimate form of flight. The landscape opens wide all around you. The air, sky, and wind inspire and surprise your eyes, heart, and mind. When I asked my uncle if thought I was too old to learn, his first question was, "How's your depth perception?" "Pretty good," I answered. His next question was, "How old are you?" When I answered, he cocked his head slightly to the side as if looking out at a great distance, and said, "Hell, you've still got 30 good years of flying in you. I've seen some good female pilots in my day - not many, but a few."
In the past months my uncle's congestive heart failure has grounded him. "A little problem with my ticker," he says. My intuition was right: That August day was the last time I would fly with him as the pilot.
But with his encouragement, I've put myself in the cockpit. The first thing I did was attend ground school - I hadn't studied that hard since my master's program in literature and writing back in the 1980s. I passed my FAA knowledge test and am now practicing in Cessna 172s (on wheels). When I visit my uncle or phone him, one of his first questions is always, "How's the flying going?" When I tell him I'm struggling with landings he gives me tips, reassuring me by saying, "There's no rush now, you'll get it."
I'm in my late 40s, balancing two children, marriage, and a writing/teaching career, and these are all the reasons I use to explain why I'm learning, slowly. It's a challenge - hands-on and financially. But in my dreams, the Stinson keeps appearing, and I know I'm on my way to flying that floatplane. Just the thought of it sends my adrenaline flowing with the kind of energy I felt in the backyard, all those years ago. Uncle Dan's heart is still ticking and I'm hoping to fly his airplane while he's still able to be a passenger.
I'm not the only one he's inspired. My youngest brother flies Boeing 757s for Northwest, and he and I are plotting a weekend of shared flight instruction in the Stinson. Uncle Dan has given us both permission to use his airplane. My oldest brother had his private pilot certificate and flew for quite a few years. The sons of several of my cousins have enrolled in aviation school, and a nephew of mine also plans on an aviation career.
Several of Dan's coworkers in the mine-supply business took up flying when they saw what an asset it was for sales. At least one of his coworkers' sons has taken up flying as well. Dan lets him use the Stinson for business trips.
A love of flight for all of us came from flying with Uncle Dan: May we all aspire to his combination of joy and skill.
Patricia Hoolihan is a freelance writer and professor in the writing department at Metropolitan State University. She is a student pilot at Wings Inc. in St. Paul, Minnesota.
