Contrails

Flying has always been about looking out the window, finding the frontier, then finding home.

It’s one of aviation’s key concepts, but a deeper version of ’€œattitude’€ is a part of us who learned to fly.

You’d never see it from the ground. A small stream runs through an ignorable culvert under a county road. In a car, it’s just a bump, if even that. Perhaps a flash, a glimpse of sunlight reflecting off water. You’d never think it was important. You’d never think you’d just crossed history. This morning, however, […]

Unlike baseball, flying is not a game of inches. But it is a game of numbers, some of which matter ultimately.

Three thousand feet above the North Dakota prairie, on a warm, clear-sky morning, Mike Paulson gets a smile on his face. “Check this out,” he says. Mike takes his feet off the rudder pedals and puts the airplane into a bank to the left. Almost immediately, the nose squirrels hard to the right. “Adverse yaw,” […]

I was almost 16 when I started flying lessons in a J-3, thinking—but not even close to knowing—where this would lead. And so began an airborne journey, a journey with destinations at once geographical and intangible. At first, flying, to me, was so concrete, apparent, so kinetic, a skill to be learned, practiced and perfected, […]

The scene is in a thousand movies. A clear night sky and a glass-calm ocean. A million brilliant stars, every one of them reflected by water. The horizon is difficult to find. Then some ship enters the scene, slowly, and the water is swirled in its wake, troubled just enough to mark the border between […]

The early instructions are clear. Abeam the numbers, reduce power. First flaps. Pitch for speed. When the far numbers are 45 degrees behind your shoulder, turn downwind to base. Pitch for speed. Second flaps. Watch your speed. There are stories about what comes next. Base to final. This is the most beautiful turn in the […]