Looking Down on Birds
Flying over rural New Zealand in small planes…
I am looking down on birds. Their white feathers glint in the afternoon sunlight. I admire their flight patterns from above, their coordinated dance as they soar together, floating through the air, high above the green paddocks below.
I am higher, but not so high that I could have missed them, that they could have blended with the farmland below.
The tiny Piper Cub I am flying in belongs to Gavin, a friend, who has owned it for fifty years. He invited my husband and I to go for a flight and we joined him in a paddock outside of St. Arnaud, New Zealand. Before we took off, he patted his plane, asking if it was okay to fly.
“Yes,” she said. I loved that he felt her presence and had that relationship with her. I had had that connection with my bright red Toyota 4-runner, which kept me safe for so many years, back when I was single.
I climbed into the back seat, buckled in tight, my husband wedged in next to me, our pilot Gavin in front. The cows in the nearby paddock munched their grass, not taking notice of us at all.
I have always loved small planes. Maybe it is in my DNA, as my father got his beloved pilot’s license on the GI bill after World War II. I have his small, leather logbook, written in his neat printing, given to me by my stepmother after Dad died.
It shows that he flew the day I was born, November 12, 1948, then not much after that. Four children, a demanding wife–I’m sorry he had to put that dream away somewhere.
In the tiny back seat of the Piper Cub, I smile and sigh with excitement as Gavin warms up the engine, then taxies down the bumpy cow paddock, picking up speed. Then my favorite moment in a small plane, as we float up from the ground, into the sky. It always feels like magic.
It feels normal, on the ground, like driving a car, picking up speed, then up and up you go, into the air, that sensation of flying tingling inside of you, as you watch the grass and road and cows become smaller and smaller and the sunlight sparkles on the stream below.
This is what freedom feels like. I drink in the sights, relishing the new, higher perspective we have, so different from the few minutes before, on the ground.
Up, up, up, past mountains dusted with early snow, over lakes, over trees glowing bright with red, yellow and orange autumn leaves, all against the bluest of skies.
At one point, Gavin lands in a paddock, for a quick break. We climb out and stretch, enjoying the silence. No one comes to question us. Such freedom again.
Then up again, this time only about 200 feet, just above the trees. Then climbing higher, dipping sideways between peaks, swooping down again over Lake Rotoroa.
I do not feel afraid. Not even for one second. I only feel awe and giddy excitement. The crisp fall air, the shadow of the plane reflected on the passing hills, looking so small and insignificant against the expanse of the world all around us.
For years I longed to get my pilot’s license, a dream I had to let go of due to the lack of enough money to follow through with it. But I could feel the sense, as he took off and landed, and took off and landed, as if I was flying the plane. The bright awareness of being present as you descend, feeling for the land so that when you touch down, it’s gentle, just right, as the wheels make contact with the ground again. The plane settles down onto the earth, rattling and shaking a bit as she readjusts to rolling along on her wheels.
The plane prefers the sky. That is clear. She was built to fly, not to roll over a grassy paddock. That is just the beginning, the ‘before the take off stage’ for its real life up in the air. I wish I had learned to fly. I must have flown before, in some previous existence. I can feel it in my body, the joy of being up in the air, the spaciousness and freedom, away from the ground. It feels so familiar. A moment of ‘yes, ah yes, this. I remember this’.
People die in small planes, but I have never felt afraid. I have no doubt, no fear, only joy as we move through the air, inside our tiny metal capsule with wings.
My husband has his pilot’s license and if we fly in a small plane together, I need to know how to land the plane. I’d love to learn that. If I took it slowly and carefully, I know I could learn all the science I’d need to learn to understand the aerodynamics. I’ve been intimidated by that before, but now I don’t feel that anymore. I feel a new certainty. It feels like coming home.
Planes are built for the sky, to fly. What was I built for? What is my form of flight, where all else is preparation, waiting? I once heard an interview with the Frenchman Philippe Petit, who, in 1974, walked across a high wire between the Twin Towers of World Trade Center.
“I am alive when I am on the wire,” he said. “All else is waiting.”
I am looking for my own version of flight, of the high wire. For now, it comes with the motion of a fluid pen moving across an expanse of white paper and the focused attention that requires.
Copyright Diane Covington-Carter 2023