Why We Fly, Indeed: There’s Always Something New Out of Africa

Fundamentals of flight elude naming, but not feeling.

Peter Garrison

Tuesday, January 20, 2026 at 10:17 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Denys Finch Hatton with the de Havilland DH.60G Gipsy Moth in Africa. [Credit: Karen Blixen Museum]

Key Takeaways:

The author reflects on the challenge of articulating the profound, "elusive quintessence" of why flying is deeply important to pilots.
He finds a powerful expression of this sentiment in the experiences of Danish author Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) from her time in colonial Kenya.
Blixen profoundly described flying with her lover, Denys Finch Hatton, as her "greatest, most transporting pleasure," a revelation of moving in three dimensions, and a moment of ultimate understanding.
Her insights, captured before Finch Hatton's tragic death in a plane crash, offer a uniquely persuasive account of the inherent bliss and freedom found in flight.

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Deputy editor Jessica Ambats’ recent invitation to readers to write about why flying is important to them reminded me that, decades ago, then-editor Robert Parke invited me to write an essay on that same subject.

Elevated by certain intoxicants, I proceeded to produce a piece of passionate prose so uncharacteristic of these pages that Parke—or perhaps it was our often similarly elevated art director, Bud Loader—decided to present it as white text on black pages. A reader nominated it for the “Excedrin Headache of the Year Award.”