This summer in Maine has mimicked the inside of a turtle's aquarium-wet and misty! So on many days where I find myself thinking of flying, I instead decide to pick up a good book or magazine and get my "fix" that way.
This morning I found an old copy of "Wind, Sand, and Stars" and read the last chapter. I'd forgotten how wonderful it is to read the prose of an aviation enthusiast who'd also be considered by many to be one of the greatest recent philosophers. Antoine de Saint-Exupery has an amazing ability to weave Mediteranean flying images into his thoughts about what it means to be human and earth bound; the perfect escape for a rainy Sunday morning in Maine.
As my instrument skills remain "honed" by my flight simulator, IFR charts/approach plates, and the occasional "actual" flights with peers; I remain in the literary clouds through my reading of aviation authors who, like myself, like to draw parallels between the wings and the stories that lift us through the air that surround our lives. Ernest Gann's "Fate is the Hunter" is a great read for those who enjoy escaping rainy low ceilings in their favorite living room chair. He talks of flying mediocre military equipment through the north Atlantic. One of my favorite stories involves a cargo plane loaded with toilet paper in marginal weather, wherein he asks (as many of us have) "Is this worth it?"
Amidst these times of high fuel prices, global warming, economic recession and instability, those of us who use the pricey hobby as our "escape" have to ask ourselves is this worth it frequently. In an attempt to link my flying to humanitarian acts, or offset my carbon-use with more eco-friendly activities, I find myself thinking about the days of old wherein these aviation authors perhaps weren't plagued with these same issues or questions. Did these questions not exist then, or did they just neglect to get caught up in them? Unsure of how to answer them, or whether they need answers anyhow, I remain stuck with the truth revealed this morning by Antoine-"that if one form of activity rather than another, brings self-fulfilment to a man...then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity, constitute his truth."
As a pilot who feels fulfilled flying spiritually from his arm chair with a good story as well as his cockpit, my truth is that on rainy Sunday mornings I already feel lifted above the wet misty morning air, and I haven't spent a dollar or burned a drop of hydrocarbon fuel.
