Prairie Sky: A Pilot's Reflections on Flying and the Grace of Altitude

Tag

59 Tag I remember the running. Usually twilight, or later. You’re it. Now run. Chase. Reach. Feel that touch. Run. Turn. Bank. Dodge. You’re it. Now run. Just run. Reach and run some more. Nothing to win or lose. Just the speed of the chase. The adrenaline joy of running hard and turning sharp. Your hand on someone’s arm or back or shoulder or head changes everything . Tag. You’re it. Now run. —————————————————— 60 Prairie Sky Game on, I think. We are cleared for takeoff, and as I move the throttle forward , I can feel the familiar, wonderful press of a seat against my back. We are rolling, pointed west, heading down Runway Two-Seven. The airspeed indicator moves past 60 knots, I pull back on the wheel, and somewhere in my body I can feel that moment when the airplane lifts easily into a warm and clear July morning on the northern prairie. Run, I think. Reach. We are off to Rugby, North Dakota, to tag the geographical center of North America. Just to touch it, to press a hand to the stone, to say we are here. Even though it’s not really there. The airplane is a Cessna 172. Tail number: N6065M. Six-Five Mike. In the seat next to me, Tim Megorden, the pastor at the college where I teach, looks out the window as the ground recedes and the horizon leaps toward the huge. He loves to fly and has been asking for a ride. Who better to take to the middle of something? “Oh, what a beautiful morning,” I sing, enthusiastically, fully off-key, not opening the microphone but loud enough for the intercom to work. “Did you sing for the choir?” he asks. “Yeah, can’t you tell?” Below us, the landscape north and west of Fargo, North Dakota, quickly becomes cropland. Small grains and sugar beets. Sunflowers and canola. Section roads divide the farms into neat squares. Shelterbelts run just as straight, protection from the wind here that humbles mountaineers. Field and forest and riverbank. Every field is green, though there are a hundred variations. Yellow green. Emerald green. Neon green. First-car green. Bad-sweater green. Chocolate green. “This is smooth,” Tim says. I know he’s talking about the air. We are early enough in this day the thermals have yet to get going, and even though there’s a wind, coming straight at us, slowing us down a bit, it passes easily over the wings. But I agree for the other reason. We are two thousand feet above the ground, motoring through the morning, able to see a larger version of this day no one on the ground will know. Yes, I think, this is smooth. I hand Tim a small camera. “What do you want me to take pictures of?” he asks. “Any kind of panorama,” I say. “Anything at all.” —————————————————— Run. Chase. Reach. Three is good. Seven is better. You need a crowd for a good game of tag. You need to have that wonder—who is he really chasing? You run and the whole Tag 61 world weaves away. You are the center of everything, and everyone reacts to you. You make a choice and give it your best shot, but even then another choice comes into range. You change course, surprise everyone. Your hand hits an elbow or thigh. Tag. The center shifts. Star becomes satellite. You’re it. Now run. Like all the good trips, this one began with a simple wondering. I was reading about a very young sailor, alone in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, passing what is called Point Nemo. Just a bit of math, really. Point Nemo is the spot farthest from any land, sitting in unbroken water between New Zealand and South America, a bit more than sixteen hundred miles in any direction from any soil. The very middle of nowhere, I thought. Unless you’re an oceanographer , which would make it the very middle of everywhere. Tough to get there, I thought. Then I was hooked. North Pole, South Pole, Equator, Everest, Marianas Trench—those are easy. Those are the edges. But where are the middles? By definition, a middle is the average farthest away from more than one edge. The middle of the earth’s population is somewhere in India. Zero latitude meets zero longitude under the water of the Atlantic off the...