Prairie Sky: A Pilot's Reflections on Flying and the Grace of Altitude - Softcover

Olsen, W. Scott

Softcover

ISBN 10: 082622007X ISBN 13: 9780826220073

Verlag: University of Missouri Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

“It’s almost like ballet. Preflight. Starting. Warm-up. The voices from the control tower—the instructions. Taxiing. The rush down the runway. Airborne. There are names for every move. The run-up. Position and hold. Every move needs to be learned, practiced, made so familiar you feel the patterns in every other thing you do. It’s technical, yes. But there is a grace to getting metal and bone into the sky.”

Prairie Sky is a celebration of curiosity and a book for explorers. In this collection of contemplative essays, Scott Olsen invites readers to view the world from a pilot’s seat, demonstrating how, with just a little bit of altitude, the world changes, new relationships become visible, and new questions seem to rise up from the ground.

Whether searching for the still-evident shores of ancient lakes, the dustbowl-era shelterbelt supposed to run the length of the country, or the even more elusive understandings of physics and theology, Olsen shares the unique perspective and insight allowed to pilots.

Prairie Sky explores the reality as well as the metaphor of flight: notions of ceaseless time and boundless space, personal interior and exterior vision, social history, meteorology, and geology. Olsen takes readers along as he chases a new way of looking at the physical world and wonders aloud about how the whole planet moves in interconnected ways not visible from the ground. While the northern prairie may call to mind images of golden harvests and summer twilight such images do not define the region. The land bears marks left by gut-shaking thunderstorms, hard-frozen rivers, sweeping floods, and hurricane-size storms. Olsen takes to the midwestern sky to confront the ordinary world and reveals the magic--the wondrous and unique sights visible from the pilot’s seat of a Cessna.

Like Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic work Wind, Sand and Stars, Olsen’s Prairie Sky reveals the heart of what it means to fly. In the grand romantic tradition of the travel essay, it opens the dramatic paradoxes of self and collective, linear and circular, the heart and the border.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

W. Scott Olsen teaches at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, where he also edits the literary magazine Ascent. He is the author of numerous books, including Never Land: Adventures, Wonder, and One World Record in a Very Small Plane and Hard Air: Adventures from the Edge of Flying.

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Prairie Sky

A Pilot's Reflections on Flying and the Grace of Altitude

By W. Scott Olsen

UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS

Copyright © 2013 The Curators of the University of Missouri
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-8262-2007-3

Contents

Prologue: Walking Chaucer..................................................
ix
River Flying: The Sheyenne River...........................................
1
Short-Hop Notebook: Dakota Sky.............................................
11
A Wall of Old Trees........................................................
13
Short-Hop Notebook: Math Class.............................................
26
River Flying: The Red River................................................
27
Short-Hop Notebook: Fame...................................................
37
Afternoon at the Atomic Café...............................................
38
Ground Reference...........................................................
46
Short-Hop Notebook: Stats..................................................
52
Storm Flying...............................................................
53
Short-Hop Notebook: Jazz...................................................
58
Tag........................................................................
59
Short-Hop Notebook: The Swoop..............................................
70
That Thing Up Front........................................................
72
A Very Deep Low............................................................
77
Monster Sky................................................................
86
Thin Places and Thick Time: A Duet for Two Worlds..........................
95
Deep SWE...................................................................
107
Collecting the Horizon.....................................................
122
The Beautiful Line.........................................................
131
Acknowledgments............................................................
143

CHAPTER 1

River Flying

The Sheyenne River

Imagine winter on the northern prairie. January cold. Deep hard snow.Blizzard one day—winds that can freeze your breath before it leaves yourbody—bright clear sky the next.

Now imagine a small airplane low in the sky, white wings in a steep bankto the left over the intersection of two frozen rivers. Riparian trees, mostlyoak and elm, outline the river course, every brown limb and branch definedagainst the snow and ice like a fine pencil sketch on a planetary scale. Wherethe wind has blown the snow away, the rivers shine as if the sun were insidethe ice.

* * *

Here is a truth, perhaps a secret, about the northern prairie. Winter is themost beautiful season. Beautiful in the way hoarfrost hangs from trees. Beautifulin the way snow can fall so gently you believe, for more than just a moment,you've entered a place both sacred and deep. Beautiful in the way thatcold air can kill you fast. Beautiful in the way that sun dogs in the morningcan make it seem like three suns ignite the horizon. Beautiful in the hard contrastsof winter light, every shape a crisp edge. Beautiful in the way that clearsky on a midwinter night is so quiet you swear you can hear the radio voicesof stars. Beautiful in the way that every story is about staying alive, and beautifulin the way that people smile when they tell them.

Earlier this morning, a full moon shaded from white to yellow and thenamber as it set. Yellow last night at rising. Bright crystal white at midnight.Yellow at setting. At sunrise, the temperature was eighteen degrees belowzero. The windchill was minus thirty-eight.

* * *

Two thousand feet above the ground, I level the airplane wings. This iswhere the Sheyenne River meets the Red River of the North, and I want tofollow the Sheyenne. Upriver, I think. Always upriver. Upriver is toward whatcame before us, before here, before now. Upriver is history rushing at us.Downriver is water I've already seen. Not history. Just the past.

I want to match the river turns and meanders, to feel the press of every riverbend in my back and chest. There is a love between the airplane and theboat or ship—the captain of one nods to the pilot of the other. Currents andtide are winds and pressure. I want to put this airplane's shadow on the riverice and go exploring.

The whole prairie is frozen. But if you live here, you learn early the lessonthat snow and ice can jump and dance. Drifts can build and disappear,sometimes migrate across the landscape. A few inches of new snow canblow into a wall that's taller than a home. The frozen river roils underneaththe ice. I want to see the Dakota snowfields that will melt into this river. Wealready know a disaster is coming. This has been a hard winter. The groundwas wet and full last fall when the frosts came, and the snowfall has beenconsistent, full of water. We already know the rivers will flood. We've beenhere before: 1997, 2009. Countless other years that did not make the nationalevening news. Sandbag walls to protect people's homes. Diversions cutinto the earth to protect the towns.

This January day, however, I want to see the frozen world. I want to fly inthe fat smooth air, to see the prairie at a truer scale, to fill my eyes with thesize of this place.

* * *

It's almost like ballet. Preflight. Starting. Warm-up. The voices from thecontrol tower—the instructions. Taxiing. The rush down the runway. Airborne.There are names for every move. The run-up. Position and hold. Everymove needs to be learned, practiced, made so familiar you feel the patternsin every other thing you do. It's technical, yes. But there is a grace to gettingmetal and bone into the sky.

This morning at the airport, the automated weather announcement gives aclue about the depth of this season. "Temperature minus two three, dew pointminus two eight, altimeter three zero two five.... Notice to airmen, RunwayOne-Three/Three-One closed, Runway Niner/Two-Seven PAPI lights out ofservice, airport signs are obscured ..." We've just had that much snow.

"Fargo ground," I say, calling the control tower, "Cessna One Zero EightNine Seven is at the north ramp ready to go. Departing to the north, thengoing to turn and follow the Sheyenne River, please. At or below three thousand."

"Cessna One Zero Eight Nine Seven, Fargo ground," a pleasant femalevoice comes over the radio. "Taxi to Runway Three-Six at Bravo Three intersectionvia Charlie at Bravo, maintain at or below three thousand, departurefrequency 120.4, squawk 0454."

"Zero four five four," I say, confirming the squawk code.

"Cessna Eight Nine Seven, verify your route of flight, please," she asks.

I can imagine the controllers in the tower. Fargo gets a lot of air traffic,but most airplanes here are in or out. Most flight lessons go to one of fourpractice areas, defined by space on the ground and altitude in the air, orpractice instrument procedures along published routes. What's this guy doing?they wonder.

"I'd like to follow...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University of Missouri Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 082622007X
• ISBN 13: 9780826220073
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 144
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar