On the first day of spring I called in sick to work, because it was Monday, and the sun was shining. The city streets were white with ground-in salt, and the last of the snow, plowed into a sooty pile at the end of the street, was already melting in the morning sun. It was a perfect day to play hooky.
I took the interstate to get away from the winter-weary town as quickly as possible. After driving for a half-hour I took an exit I wasn't familiar with, and struck off to the northwest. I had lunch on a hillside with a panoramic view of farms in the valley below. I took off my sweater and leaned back on my elbows, looking up at row after row of puffy clouds, then looking down at their shadows, where a farmer plowed a dark brown ribbon in a quilt of green and tan.
Suddenly, a dark shadow, shaped nothing like a cloud, skimmed over the valley. It rippled toward the hill, a wedge of grey, and I looked up, holding my hand over the sun, to see what made this shadow speeding towards me.
It was an airplane, unlike anything I'd ever seen, with impossibly long wings, slim as a bullet and whiter than the clouds, flying low and fast and aiming straight for me. It made no sound except for a whistling noise; in a second it passed over the treetops and was gone.
"What the heck was that?" I asked out loud. I went back to the car and pulled out the map. "There," I said, when I located the airport symbol a few miles north. "That's where I'm going." I started the car and drove off, holding the map against the steering wheel. About twenty minutes later I saw a sign that said "Cross-wind field."
I pulled into a gravel parking lot. A large trailer, like a mobile home, had the words "Office" painted on the side. I parked in front of it and went inside, into what looked like a living room, furnished with a couple of ratty-looking easy chairs and an even rattier green sofa. A big golden retriever, lying on the sofa, opened an eye and wagged its tail when I walked in. A counter had been set up between the living room and the kitchen, and a large man who looked like Santa Claus stood over the stove, eating out of a pot.
"Sorry to interrupt your lunch," I said.
"No problem," he said, walking over to the counter. "I squeeze in a couple of mouthfuls when I can. More than I get to do on weekends. How can I help you?"
"I'm not sure. I was just having lunch myself when I saw-actually, I'm not sure what I saw. I mean, it was an airplane, a beautiful airplane, but I don't know what kind."
"Sailplane," he said. "That's what we fly here. Can I schedule a ride for you?"
"A ride? For me? Oh no, I was just wondering about the plane, you know?"
He nodded. "It's a perfect day for a ride."
"Really?"
"Couldn't ask for better."
"Thirty-five dollars for a twenty minute ride"
"Oh, well, that's kind of a lot for me right now," I said.
He nodded again. "I know how that goes."
I nodded back and looked around. The glass-bottomed counter had two shelves filled with stacks of books, T-shirts and hats with "Crosswind Aviation" printed on them, bumper stickers that read "Glider pilots keep it up longer." A calendar with a picture of a white sailplane hung on one wall, and three pieces of cloth that looked like shirttails hung on the other wall, next to the door. Each one had a person's name, the word "solo", and a date written in felt-tip pen. The one on top also had a drawing of an airplane, and the words "Keith Simmins cheated death October 1, 1991." "I looked from the shirttail back to the man at the counter, who stood with his big hands on the counter top, watching me and smiling pleasantly.
"Do you take checks?" I asked.
"Sure do." His smile deepened. "Make it out to Crosswind Aviation."
I pulled out my checkbook, took a deep breath, and wrote the check. What the heck, I thought, it's my 21st birthday.
I handed him the check and he gave me a ticket. "Go out the door, turn left, and walk all the way down to the end of the runway. Keep close to the trees and you won't get in anyone's way. Ask for Andy when you get down there."
"Thanks."
"Have a good ride," he said, heading back to the stove.
I followed his directions, and walked down the side of a big grass field, with trees on three sides of it. I looked for the white sailplane, but all I saw was a regular airplane at the far end of the field, and something orange behind it. When I got closer I could see a man and a woman standing in front of the airplane talking. The man looked something like the man in the office, but wasn't quite as big, and he was bald as well as beardless. The woman was a few inches shorter than me, with long white hair she wore in a braid over her right shoulder, and laugh lines at the corner of her eyes.
"Hi'" she said as I walked up. "Here for a ride?"
"Yes," I said. "I'm supposed to go with Andy."
She laughed "I'm Andy. It's short for Andrea, Andrea Mahon. And you're?"
"Ellen Horvath."
She shook my hand. "Nice to meet you, Ellen. This is Herb Armstrong, our tow pilot."
"Hi," I said. Herb just grunted.
"C'mon," said Andy. "Let's go for a ride."
We walked around the tail of the white airplane, which didn't look so white close up. It was splashed with mud and smudged with black streaks along its sides.
"Have you ever been up in a sailplane, Ellen?"
"No, just a flight from Chicago a few months ago. It was kind of like riding a bus."
"Well, this is a lot more fun. Let me show you how to get in."
She stopped in front of an orange plane that had no propeller, but other-wise looked nothing like the sailplane I had seen. Its wings were huge, stuck like a thick slab on top of the fuselage, which was tilted awkwardly so that one wingtip was resting on the ground. It had a big lumpy belly, like a whale, and the faded paint was chipped off the nose revealing irregular patches of greenish yellow and dull silver.
"This is it?", I said with dismay. "I thought you said sailplane?"
"This is a sailplane, or you can call it a glider. What's wrong?"
"I thought it would be white and pretty."
She patted the ugly glider gently.
"This is a Schweizer 2-33, a training sailplane, and it may not be long on looks but it soars just fine. Believe me, it becomes much prettier in the air. Now, why don't you come over and put your right foot on this little step and your hand on top of the instrument panel, and climb in. Don't even try to be graceful."
I followed her directions, and sure enough, felt like a klutz. She showed me how to fasten the seat belt and shoulder straps, and pointed to a red knob.
"It's how we release from the towplane," she said. "Don't touch it until I tell you."
"Don't worry," I said.
Herb walked over with a yellow rope as Andy climbed in behind me. He bent down with a grunt and hooked on the rope, then straightened up with another grunt and ambled over to the towplane. He climbed in and a few seconds later the propeller whirled twice with a scraping sound, then stopped. Herb spit through the open window and tried again. This time it whirled about five times before stopping. On the third try the engine finally caught. I thought about the shirttail that read "cheated death."
"How high do we go?" I asked as the towplane started to move.
"Three Thousand feet."
"Isn't that awfully high?"
"Not nearly high enough for a glider pilot. Watch your head - I'm going to shut the canopy. If you get too warm, you can open the air vent once we're moving. It's on top of the instrument panel."
The vent, such as it was, consisted of a little black flap that I could swivel open or closed. The glider's few instruments were arranged below it. Andy explained that the altimeter told us how high we were, the airspeed indicator how fast we were going, and the variometer how quickly we were going up or down. A small compass was next to the air vent. It didn't look like nearly enough stuff to me.
The towplane rolled in front of us, dragging the thin yellow towrope, which now looked a lot thinner than it had when Herb hooked it to the glider.
I watched the towplane roll slowly to a stop ahead of us on the runway. Suddenly the towplane's engine roared and we bumped along the ground as the glider righted itself and picked up speed, then suddenly everything was smooth.
"We're flying!" she told me.
I could see the trees moving past us on either side, but the grass beneath us was just a blur of green. Then it was gone-just like that-magic. A whole valley lay before me, spread out far below. I could see small farmhouses, barns, fields and toy-sized cows and horses, a road was a slim grey ribbon with a matchbox car moving slowly along it. Andy was talking - I just realized that she had been describing the scenery but I hadn't heard a word.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?" I asked.
"I said, taking off from here is almost like launching from an aircraft carrier- the runway ends at a cliff and the ground drops straight down more than four hundred feet." She had to shout a little for me to hear her. "It'll be quieter after we release. The towplane is pretty noisy."
I kept gawking out of the window, looking right and left. I could look straight below and watch the ground moving underneath us, or ahead at the towplane, which bobbled up and down in front of us. We bobbled, too, and I gave the shoulder straps an extra tug. They had seemed tight enough on the ground.
"How are you doing?" Andy shouted.
"Fine," I shouted back.
"Almost there. There's going to be a loud bang when we pull the release. Are you ready?"
"Yes."
"Okay, pull the red knob."
I pulled, and sure enough, it sounded like a pistol shot. Then-nothing but the soft murmur of the wind outside.
Andy didn't say anything for a minute while I tried to take in the sudden deceleration, the silence. Then, in a quiet voice she said, "Lovely, isn't it?"
"It's beautiful."
We soared over countryside that looked like a postcard. The fields were small squares and rectangles, all shades of brown and green. Houses were smaller than dollhouses. A herd of Angus was an ant colony. Above me, the white clouds hung in puffs with flat grey undersides. We were floating in the blue sky, floating in nothing, detached and silent in a strange craft that was narrower than an armchair.
Suddenly, the sailplane made a whomping noise, with a jolt that I felt through the seat cushion. Andy turned the plane sharply to the left in a circle that made me dizzy. The top of my head felt like a hand pressed on it and when I looked to the side I was looking straight down. One wing seemed stuck in the ground like the tip of a penknife, and the fields spun around below us. The other wing pointed up, stabbing at the sky.
"How do you feel?" asked Andy.
My heart was pounding and my palms were sweating. "Funny but okay," I said. "Don't stop."
"All right," she said. "Isn't this great?"
"What are we doing?"
"That bump you felt was a rising air current. We turned toward it and now we're circling to stay in it because it's very narrow. It's taking us up like an elevator, expect we're climbing at more than 500 feet a minute. We just gained a thousand feet."
"How high can we go?" I asked.
"Let's see," she answered.
We spun and spun. I couldn't keep track of where we were, or what was beneath us. I held on the seat cushion, which didn't seem terribly secure, but it was all there was. The fields and houses were smaller and I couldn't see the cows anymore.
"You're one mile high," Andy told me.
A mile high! We were one mile above the hard ground in a plane that had no motor, and we didn't have parachutes, either. We had done what seemed impossible from down there, not mearly floated but actually climbed in the invisible air. We were a mile above our problems. We were cheating death, and I loved it.
"Look up," Andy said.
I looked up. We were under a cloud, so close I was sure I could touch it if I opened the canopy. It was massive, dark steel grey, utterly smooth, concave. The edge swirled in white threads along side us. All I could do was whisper "Wow!"
The glider stopped turning and we flew straight towards the milky fingers that drifted down at the edge of the cloud. In a moment we were in the sunlight, so bright I squinted, and then we passed under another massive cloud, like a big grey blanket. Once more I watched the ground swirl beneath us.
"Fifty-eight hundred feet," Andy said with satisfaction. "What a day."
"Isn't it always like this?" I asked.
"I wish," she said. "It's too cold in the winter, and usually too hot and muggy in the summer. But in spring and fall we get days like this, and we can soar all day, just like a hawk. But now it's time for us to get down."
She flew out from under the cloud and we floated in the sunshine. I watched the houses getting bigger, and soon could see the ant-like cows again.
"How would you like to fly it for a few minutes?" Andy suddenly asked.
"Me? I don't know how."
"I'll show you. Hold the stick with your right had-don't grab it, just caress it. Then push it away a little to go faster, and pull it toward you to slow down."
I held the stick as she told me.
"If you want to turn right, just move the stick to the right. To turn left, move it left. I'll work the rudder pedals for you. Go ahead, turn right."
I moved the stick cautiously to the right, and felt the glider tilt over. Andy put her hands on my shoulders.
"See? You're flying it!"
My mouth was dry and my legs were shaking. I was flying! I moved the stick to the right a little more. The right wing tipped down and the left wing tipped up, then I moved the stick to the left and the glider slowly straightened, but it seemed we were going far to fast.
"I think you'd better take over!" I cried. I felt her on the controls, a solid, comforting feel, and let go of the stick.
"I've got it," she said. "You did just fine. That wasn't bad at all for your first time."
We flew back to the airport, and I could see the grass runway, with the towplane parked on the side as before, and the office trailer, and my car, a faded red bulge in the parking lot. Now the trees looked like trees instead of brown smudges, and my car grew larger as I watched it. Much too soon, we were turning for the last time, aiming for the end of the runway where we had taken off. I heard the landing, rather than felt it-the sound of grass under the wheel and the metal wings were booming like thunder as we rolled along the uneven ground. Then we stopped, perfectly balanced, until the left wing reluctantly tilted onto the ground.
Andy got out first and held the front of the glider down so I could climb out more easily.
"Well, we had a forty-five minute ride. Thanks a lot, Ellen, it was fun."
"Thank you Andy. It certainly was," I said, and thought, it was more than that, I had flown the airplane. I had held the control stick in my hand and made it move, right and left, forward and back. I made the glider tilt its wings and soar through the air. I made it fly.
I had seen wonders-commonplace, ordinary, utterly mundane objects transformed by altitude into rare treasures. How many people saw them like that, I wondered, so intimate, the countryside reduced to a diorama, Roadside America for an audience of one?
I looked back at the glider, sitting cockeyed on the runway, and realized that Andy had been right. It was a pretty aircraft. No, more than that. It was beautiful.
= O =