From the concrete giant, for a second, there shines a green light. There. Again. From the control tower, a brilliant green pencil flashing. And behind the green, a tiny figure in the tower. He is clearing me to land. How kind of him, how very thoughtful! From two thousand feet above his airport, we have been invited to stop and have a cup of coffee and talk about the old days.
Thank you very much, friend, but I must really be on my way. Wouldn’t want to disturb those airplanes that do believe in radios. We rock our wings in thanks, and rock them with a gentle wish, for his is an unusual offer. There is an interesting fellow behind the green light at Columbus Municipal, and someday I shall come through here again and ask of him.
A crossing of a river, some tall radio towers sliding below, and the country closes back in as the city has gone. Cities are always losing the battle. No matter how big they are, there is always the country; patient, like a quiet green sea about it, waiting to close back in. The ground changes quickly from Modern back to Always, after one flies over a city. A strip of motels hangs on for a moment lining the highways into town, but at last they surrender and the country takes over, and with it the quiet life and the quiet people. Again the roar of the engine drifts down to treetop height and is absorbed into green needles.
Parallel to the deserted road that will bring me to the Auburn airport is a wide field cut, and level, fit for landing. My money in the bank, that allows me play and the enjoyment of flying low.
Two tall pines ahead, a wingspan apart, swifting closer, stretching high above us until one last second and hard back on the control stick and full left aileron and in a steep climbing turn we watch the needles brush by. That’s the consciousness of flying, when you can reach out and touch the ground moving by, and brush the branches of a tree as you pass. There is no place that is more fun to fly than a horizon-to-horizon meadow with trees sparsely planted. Fly down low with wheels flicking through the grass; flash by the first trees at cow-level so that they look normal and unscalable, rush toward the next that look just as haughty and then in a simple small movement of stick and rudder roar straight up and over and roll inverted and look down at its branches.
Yet how they worked, how those first to fly worked to get away from the ground! Years of their life and thought for a flight of a hundred feet, for an altitude of ten feet, for twenty seconds in the air. And today we can taste the sheer and untrammeled fun of flying the twenty seconds, then another twenty, and another. Roll the wheels in the meadow, swing them high and rolling over the top of the tallest trees. Slice the rush of air with a wingtip, with a glove, with eyes squinting. This is flying. The power to throw yourself happily through the sky, to see the familiar world from any angle at all, or not to see it, to turn one’s head and spend an hour in the otherworld of the hills and plains and cliffs and lakes and meadows all built of cloud.
But take a pilot in his very favorite airplane and immerse him in his very favorite conditions: meadow with trees planted, mountains to conquer, alone in the sunset clouds. Rarely, very rarely, and then only if you watch very closely, you may see him smile. I caught myself at this and asked how could it be.
It was low-level flying over the desert, at very high speed, leading a flight of four F-86 Sabrejets to a target. All the cards were there and face up: we needed the low-level training mission to fill a squadron requirement; we were heavy on fuel and had to go full throttle to burn it away; the ground was flat and the air was caught in the stillness of early morning. At the end of the low-level flight waited the gunnery targets. I flew a good airplane, and the bet was a nickel for every bullet hole in the target.
Result, then, was a needle on the airspeed indicator that settled on 540 miles per hour. Result was the need for tiny little movements of the control stick to follow the low rise and fall of the earth and for quick jumps over tall cactus. Result was three friends in loose formation to left and right, engaging all in the favorite mission of highspeed low-level, and a challenge waiting. Eight heavy machine guns, in that flight, loaded and ready to fire. Four smooth sweptwing arrows that were sheer beauty in their silver against the early desert, one rising here over a boulder, one dipping now into a hollow, banking sharply to avoid a single yucca plant. Like kids down the block playing at Jet Fighter Pilot, with great big pretty authentic official toys, splitting the air with sudden howitzer-sounds to the lizards in the sun, and not a single human ear to be disturbed or to voice complaint.
Speed and power and control; toys enjoyed to their fullest. But I wasn’t smiling. I wasted a precious second of that joy distilled in concern. Why wasn’t I smiling? I should be laughing, singing, were there room to dance I should be dancing.
The lesson then, handed from a different airplane, handed at a speed of 543 miles per hour, at an altitude of seven feet three inches. Inwardly, inwardly, pilot. The only important things happen within yourself. Something great and wild and different and unusual may happen outside of you, but the meaning and importance of it come from within. A smile is outward, a way of communicating. Here you can be lost in the joy and hold it all to yourself, knowing it, tasting it, feeling it, being happy. No communication required.
* * *
There, beyond the powerlines, Auburn airport. Back on the stick, roaring up over the wires, seeing clearly and at once the two hard-surface runways, the two grass landing strips, a scarlet windsock stirring softly above the gasoline pumps. Into the wind, circle the field, pick the landing strip and the part of the strip that we shall land upon. The parachute is hard; it will be good to get out and walk around. One lonely biplane in the landing pattern, but the biplane is not aware of her loneliness and turns easily toward the bright spring grass.
A good strip, this, not even the ruts of many landings worn into it. An inviting soft place to come again to ground and a place that the biplane can turn toward as she has so many times before. Throttle back and the propeller becomes a silent windmill. Down we glide, green ahead, wind going soft in the wires, whishing gently just enough to say that it is there. Forward on the stick, forward and the trees growing tall at each side of the strip, and taller and the grass is blocked out ahead and blurred to the sides, stick back now, as we slow, and back and back. and with a little crash we’re down and rolling on all three wheels, clattering and thudding through the unevenness from which the green grows. Left-rudder-right-rudder and here we are all of a sudden at that familiar speed at which I could hop over the side and walk. A touch of throttle and we taxi slowly toward the gasoline pumps and the few buildings clustered around. Neither old buildings nor new; one a hangar, another a flight school with windows looking out upon the runways, another hangar around back. A few people standing near the door, talking and watching the biplane as it taxies.
A burst of power and the pulsing wind beating back upon me for a moment, then left rudder to swing around near the low-octane pump and bring the red-knobbed mixture lever forward to Idle-Cutoff. The engine runs on for four seconds, then all at once it goes quiet and I can hear the pistons clanking softly and the propeller coasting to a stop.