Flying

It occurred to me that, though this blog is called “Airway” and I have revealed my predilection for feathers and birds, I haven’t shared much about a deep passion that it will be obvious has greatly influenced the overall theme of this blog. My third post the first week held some clues as did a few other early posts.

My dad had a private pilot’s license and did a good bit of personal flying when I was a kid. He never owned his own plane so our access to flying was limited, but I grew up around airplanes enough to have caught the disease early on. Flying was recognized as a disease by the very first pilots. In a 1900 letter to Octave Chanute, three years before the first successful airplane flight, Wilbur Wright wrote:

"For some years I have been afflicted with the belief that flight is possible to man. My disease has increased in severity and I feel that it will soon cost me an increased amount of money if not my life."

It is akin to malaria or hepatitis in that once infected, you have it for life. There is no escape.

My dad was a good one really, but he was pretty distracted by his work when I was young. When I was almost grown he had some enlightenment in this area and he became my best friend during my young adulthood and until he died. But we had precious little in common when I was a kid. One passion we did share and it brought us together as nothing else did. We both loved airplanes and flying.


I was destined to become a pilot. It was an early ambition to become a bush pilot or possibly fly for the airlines. That was not meant to be and I ended up in the visual arts. Not such a jump, really, as many pilots are artists or writers or frustrated wanna-bes. Flight is truly poetry in motion. Airplanes have fabulous form-follows-function sculptural beauty. So aviation is shot through with aesthetics. Anyway, I did earn a private pilot’s license in my early twenties. For a number of years I was able to fly regularly. I was quite consumed with it. I read Flying magazine and Private Pilot, Sport Pilot, and Kitplanes religiously, cover to cover, every month. If you had known me then, you probably would have thought me one-track minded and even obnoxious about it.

Back when I was about ten years old I was taken by the idea of building my own airplane. In the 80’s the development of airplane kits in the experimental aviation world made this dream much more attainable. Though still very expensive, build time could be cut to hundreds of hours as opposed to thousands of hours for scratch building. For years I made my wife crazy with my fixation to do this. I was consumed with it.

I eventually came to the realization that it had become an idol in my life. It actually was my religion as it is for many. If you ever go up to Oshkosh, Wisconsin for the annual Mecca experience of the Experimental Aircraft Association, you will see what I mean. I had to put flying on the altar of sacrifice in order to follow God’s calling on my life and have a right relationship with Him. After much trauma, I finally got to the point of being able to yield this over to God’s will. I could (and still can) honestly say that if I never again got to control an airplane with my own hands, it was okay. I did get the chance to experience what few ever get to and I am deeply grateful for that. The memory is more than enough. That said, if God should ever provide the opportunity to fly again, I will certainly accept it! And I still hold on to the hope of building my own plane someday. That desire has never been taken away for even one day. It’s always there. But I bury it deeply.

There have been several periods of my life when I dealt with my airplane addiction by ignoring it. My financial status has precluded flying for many years now. I push down the desire and stay away from small airports so the jones doesn’t overwhelm me too badly. But it’s still there, an undercurrent of wonder, fascination, and desire. It seemed appropriate to make reference to it in this blog as there is a veneer here of anonymity and the fact that I’m truly an airplane person has been quite veiled in my current life. Very few people that know me in the state where I now live have any idea that I am a pilot. It’s a hidden part of me. And this blog has been a place where I’ve opened up some hidden areas of my experiences. So here is one more iota of information, a little krill of insight swimming in the vast ocean of the blogosphere. And now you know why all the constant references to flight.

dream