The miracle of wings

The generous and thoughtful Ms. X just presented me with an early Christmas gift. We were in the mood to watch a movie, so she unveiled "One Six Right: The Romance of Flying."

It's a documentary look at a single airport and what it has meant to the pilots who fly out of it. I highly recommend it.

The film started me thinking about my many experiences around just such airports over 30 years as a pilot and the wonderful experiences I've had in the air. It also made me explore some of my deeper feelings about flight and what it's meant to my life.

It always brings me back to earth when I try to philosophise about flying. And I'm not alone. One of the old coots interviewed in the film says it's virtually impossible to describe piloting to someone who hasn't done it and I reluctantly agree. We've had very few "pilot philosophers" or "pilot poets" and they unfortunately tended to die young (think Antoine St. Exupery or John Magee).

Of the many, many feelings flying has produced in me, I'll offer a puzzling contrast for your consideration:

Often when flying a single seater, especially a high performance sailplane, you're faced with a sweet and sour or yin and yang sensation. As you listen to your slow breathing in the oxygen mask. As you scrape a light frost off the inside of the canopy for a better view of the earth far below. As you raise your hand to shield your eyes from the sun that seems so much brighter, more piercing than down below, you feel a terrible loneliness and unbridgeable separation from your fellow humans. And you also feel like a god.

I'll leave you with the most famous work of the aforementioned John Magee, an American who died flying for the RAF in World War II. He was nineteen when he died.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.