2. First Flight Lessons
The following summer, I saved up some money and it was time at last for my first lesson on flight. I could hardly believe how lucky I was to sit in the left seat of the Cessna 172 at Bitterroot Aviation and have the full attention and support of an experienced instructor to guide me up into the sky, the playground of those who laugh at gravity. I was so nervous and afraid, doubt flooded my mind. What am I doing here? Did I really believe I could or should fly an airplane? I call myself a grown up but I still have trouble locating my car keys! I felt so embarrassed to be there like I didn't belong, I'm not supposed to, that's the pilot seat, it's not for people like me. I’m 38, I’m too old. I'm really no good at those flight sim games I get lost in the class E airport before I even take off and I crash the airplane when trying to land. Definitely do NOT tell my instructor that. Just don't touch anything and I better trust Kurt and do exactly everything he says or we are going to crash and DIE!
Lining up down the runway, Kurt said "ok, push the throttle full in." I felt the airplane surge forward and then lift into the air, the force of the wind on the controls under my own fingers, my heart soared like I’ve never felt before, in defiance of gravity itself, and the weight of the world became light and distant. All those fearful and inadequate thoughts just melted away and turned into pure exhilarating joy of freedom. How could this be? I can't even describe how it makes my heart beat, like there’s some magic in my blood that awakens with altitude and makes me glow from deep inside. I am a Sky Woman! Even now after many more hours I still feel that way every time.
Those first flights were terrifying and glorious at the same time, not always knowing exactly what to do but wanting more with each new discovery. Whenever I got overloaded Kurt would always ask me if I wanted to go do a bit of mountain flying. YES! I was so amped on adrenaline after flying I would pace around the house listening to private pilot study podcasts while eating a whole jar of peanut butter. I couldn’t get enough (peanut butter OR flying!). I loved working on learning to land and focusing on how to do better. After lessons and returning home to tend the sheep at times I lay in the pasture staring at the sky, wishing to be back. I loved my sheep, and I spent hours outside with them with my aviation books studying while they asked for pets and nibbled on the corners of my pages.
Curious Gotland ewes helping me study for my private pilot exams.
Bitterroot Mountains, relaxing with the sheep after a morning flight lesson.
I always loved the Earth, the feeing of dirt under my fingernails, of working hard in the soil or with the sheep and feeling the sweet tiredness of a good days work to make sleep come quickly. I wrote in my journal that evening while staring at the stars in the sheep pasture: Tonight is one of those broody skies that compels you to take a picture. But on the screen it’s just so regular. You can’t really capture the depth, the vastness, the emotion. I didn’t take a picture. The clouds spread out over the Bitterroots like a living thing, majestic and terrifying. I close my eyes and hear the propeller, it’s a busy cockpit, the lovely sound of the engine, I can smell the focus like it has a thickness in the air, mixed with a bit of avgas. The headset crackles with my breath and even the muffled sounds through the noise cancelling is deafening in stark contrast from this quietness on the ground. It doesn’t feel right. I need to be up there. I have to be up there. My body loathes the ground for the sky, like a lost lover that never let go, but I smile wistfully at the earth before me to soothe it from the fear it’s losing me. In truth it never had me.
When I close my eyes I can feel my toes squeeze on the right rudder pedal and the plane yaw so gently, like a lazy crocodile flicking a tail to turn into the stream. The feeling of such a little movement coming from my toes in so little of a plane at a thousand feet above the earth makes my heart beat with meaning. I want to watch the sun set over the Rockies at 5,000 ft. I want to feel my heart explode in raw delight over the terrifying physics harnessed in the beautiful wings of a little airplane. I want to feel the shudder of the forces of nature through the flight controls in my fingertips, singing sweet songs to my soul of my fragility and mortality. I've fallen love with life all over again.
Just as I was about ready to solo, the airplane went down for significant engine maintenance, and then time ran out and Kurt had to move on to his seasonal fire scouting job. Being out of an airplane and an instructor and in the middle of a surge in COVID cases made it difficult to find other options. That’s when my neighbor introduced me to Richard.
