The discussion plays itself out almost the same way every time. “Where is it?” someone asks. “On the south side of the road,” I answer. From there it becomes a back and forth,
trying to figure out which way the person is coming from and which way he is heading. In the end, understanding is reached with a simple, “Turn left.”
My insistence on giving people driving directions in relation to a cardinal heading is called outside-in navigation. It means I think of the situation from a bird’s-eye view, rather than from the car, which would be considered an inside-out form of navigation. Not coincidentally I began the seemingly helpful but often annoying practice after I learned how to fly.
Of the dozens of things you’ll learn how to do on your journey to a pilot certificate, safe and efficient navigation is one of the most obscure to the uninitiated. I don’t think it’s that students expect we use Google Maps to help us get from one point to another, but a nautical-like chart, a compass, and a slide rule? That’s Christopher Columbus material. I’d joke that we use celestial navigation, but they still teach that in the military. In other words, we still learn how to get where we are going by filling out a navigation log and calculating time, fuel, and distance with a technology that was invented before there was a New York—or even a New Amsterdam.
At the risk of sounding like a relic, I love it. How wonderful is it that we can learn new skills that bring an entirely new perspective to our worlds? Learning navigation brought me a new understanding of direction, and the journey from one place to another. It also brought me a new and much better way to orient myself. Although my nonpilot friends and family may get annoyed, it’s infinitely quicker and easier to explain something in terms of cardinal direction than it is a series of turns. (Learn how to do this in an airplane and you’ll be much more confident.)
But what navigation really has brought me is the view. Flying on nice days involves some amount of dead reckoning, and we are thus compelled to look out the window in order to make the trip safely. And that is a beautiful thing. Once you get comfortable with actually manipulating the flying contraption, looking out the window is the real joy. As a kid I used to love to watch the detail of the topography and man-made signs and structures on car trips. Today I love to see these things from the air. Not only does aviation give me access to things I never would have otherwise seen, but even the things you do get to see from the ground look amazingly new and different from the air. Full understanding and appreciation of North America’s tallest peak, dolphin pods swimming off the Atlantic coast, and vast Midwest floods are only reached from on high.
I have company in my love of looking out the window. This month’s cover story, “Enjoy the View”, is a celebration of the many ways we can find adventure by seeking out unique maps and then seeing those amazing sights from the air. Author W. Scott Olsen proves that inspiration can be found anywhere.
If in life we all must stop and smell the roses at one time or another, shouldn’t all pilots—students included—stop and enjoy the view?
