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

Collecting the Horizon

122 Collecting the Horizon 1. Just a whisper will do. You hear it down the hall, part of a conversation that does not include you, and you lean to follow the sounds as they round a corner. Or you remember the lyric to a song you knew when you were young and feel your imagination swell with the weight of a dream on the edge of being gone too long. Or you read something, and, much later, you wonder why one detail stays with you. It wasn’t important to the story. It’s become essential to you now. So you begin to chase it, to follow it, to bring it close, to find out why. Or you simply keep it, store it in your head and heart. The details matter. It may take years for a pattern to emerge or for the meaning to appear. The pattern may never emerge and the meaning may never appear, yet the details carry weight. This is important. It does not matter why. 2. “Cessna Two Four One Two Whiskey, Runway Three-Six at Bravo Three intersection , turn left on course, cleared for takeoff.” “Cleared for takeoff, One Two Whiskey,” I say. The throttle goes in. Jonathan, in the seat next to me again, chart on a clipboard on his lap, camera at the ready, smiles at the beginning rush. There is some rain to the west and south, but the sky at Fargo is only dotted with cottonball clouds and our route should be clear. We are flying across the state to the International Peace Garden, just north of Dunseith, North Dakota, on the border with Canada. This is an important flight. A necessary flight. We are collecting details. Collecting the Horizon 123 3. The International Peace Garden is half in Canada, and half in the United States, but the burger joint is on the American side. Canadians can descend the American steps and order a burger—as long as they go right back to Canada. The hamburger stand offers fries with gravy, something the Canadians appreciate. —Alton Marsh, “The Nation’s Quirkiest Airports,” AOPA Pilot 4. Climbing away from the runway, I begin a turn to the left, and Jonathan takes pictures of the fields, the fat green of soybeans, the rich gold of wheat. Some fields appear slate-gray where there is no crop at all, just dirt, because the ground was too wet in the spring for planting. In the language of the Farm Services Agency and crop insurance, the fields themselves “prevented planting .” We fly over some of the toughest, wettest soil in the region. I level the airplane at three thousand feet. According to the instruments, a 20-knot headwind greets us. One hundred and seventy-five nautical miles from the Peace Garden airport, our airspeed is 96 knots. Our ground speed is only 80 knots. It may take us some time to get there, but we should rocket back. 5. I don’t know why we came in second. The article was titled “The Nation’s Quirkiest Airports,” but number one looks for aliens more than Cessnas. Named the Greater Green River Intergalactic Spaceport, the Wyoming site has dead animals and parked cars on the deeply rutted runway. Good marketing with the name, perhaps. But nothing more. The second choice is inspired. An airport set on an international border. An airport in North Dakota! Close enough I could claim it as home territory. An airport where, once landed, a pilot can choose in which country to park his airplane. An airport where they serve french fries with gravy. I’ve been to Canada many times. I’ve been up and down the Alaska highway and the Dempster highway. I’ve been to Resolute and Grise Fiord, Baffin and Ellesmere Islands, as well as pubs in Ottawa and Montreal. Winnipeg is backyard close. But I’ve never had french fries with gravy. Jonathan was born in Williston, just west of the Peace Gardens, and he spent his early youth in Rolla, just east of the Peace Gardens. He has been to the gardens many times. He is mostly vegetarian. But he has never had french fries with gravy. And he has never seen the prairie from only three thousand feet. Sometimes just a whisper will do. The details are important. We had to go. 124 Prairie Sky 6. “The river is much better behaved than...