A Book of Time
Looking at life in the air one logbook page at a time.
By Lane Wallace
February 2002
The
notes are cryptic; scattered snapshots of a life that would mean
very little to anyone except me. Two words—"By myself"—are
all that denote the cascade of emotions, experience, fear, excitement
and joy that accompanied my first solo in my Cessna 120 taildragger.
"Familiarization," reads another stoic entry explaining
15 minutes' worth of signed-off flying time that would seem perfectly
ordinary and mundane if it weren't for the brief designation "P-38J"—a
World War II fighter plane—in the column describing "type
of aircraft."
"Familiarization."
I laugh, even looking at it now. I remember reaching over my friend
Steve's shoulders to take the controls as we flew the fighter
from California to Minnesota that spring day, banking the airplane
left and right, giddy with the feel of being in control of a real,
honest-to-goodness fighter, even if it was from my crouched perch
on the wing. I was on the wing because P-38s don't have an actual
jump seat. The only way to hitch a ride in a Lightning is to strap
yourself onto the wing spar that cuts through the cockpit behind
the pilot's seat. The quarters are crowded, and not recommended
for anyone much over my 5'4" height, but my, oh my, the ride
is worth it! Sitting on top of the Lightning's wing, the world
stretches out around and beneath you, separated only by the Plexiglas
canopy bubble over your head. It's an E-ticket ride of speed and
sight in a changing hemisphere of earth and sky, colors and sounds
all rushing by the wingtips at 300 miles an hour or more.
I
remember flashing through towering halls of cumulus columns that
day, squealing with delight as Steve cut knife-edged through the
pathways of the heavens, catching the shadow of ourselves in a
circular rainbow as we came out of the cloud city's streets and
rolled, wing over wing, into a clear blue sky. I didn't want the
experience to end, and yet I thought I'd burst with intensity
if it went on one moment longer. "If I die right now,"
I remember thinking, "at least I'll have known what it is
to be alive."
All
of this life, emotion and intensity, encapsulated in the simple
droll word, "familiarization." I smile, touch the page
fondly and move on, lost in days and years of memories and moments
that flood over me like a waterfall. For I have reached one of
those momentous landmarks in time—the closing of a logbook,
and the start of a new journal of life, time and memories yet
to come.
I'd
actually been wondering lately where some of the years of my life
had gone. They seemed to have slipped by faster than I intended,
even though I thought I was paying attention. What had I done
with them? The answer isn't entirely in the tattered, worn logbook
I've now filled, of course, but an important piece of it is. For
cryptic as the notes would be to anyone else, to me they spell
the measure of more than a decade, bringing back moments, memories,
people and emotions like vacation photos of friends found years
after everyone has scattered.
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