It happened again last night as I walked Tommy to sleep. A soft and distant murmur, high in the dusking summer sky, led my eyes to the blinking red and green navigation lights that marked the passing of a little single engine airplane.

Who is he, I wondered, and where’s he bound? Is he anxious to arrive at his destination? Or, is he just glad to be gone? Will someone be waiting? I imagined myself there behind him looking over his shoulders at the soft glow of the instruments, lulled by the sound of the engine, hanging high above the horizon, following the sun in an endless and darkening sky.

When I was a young boy, long before I went to Alaska, the lonesome sound of a freight train, passing through the night caused me to ponder these same questions. I grew up in an era when it was still common to see hobos riding the rails, and I learned to read their cryptic messages, left on the fence posts and front porch gates throughout our little Midwestern town.

“A man with a gun lives here.” One symbol said.

“This is a safe place to ask for food.” Another indicated.

And, my favorite one...“Nice people live here… but you’ll have to pray with them.”

Since then, other sounds have been added to the list of those that make me wonder; The moan of a foghorn as an iron ore ship rounds the Calumet Peninsula… just some small and distant lights on a hazy horizon at dusk. The lonely whine of truck tires on a stretch of country two-lane… and the ethereal cloud of dust that struggles to climb into the humid evening sky. And, the soft and distant hum of a small plane suspended in the heavens... its lights just a faint twinkle. The more remote the locations I happen to be in… the more poignant the questions become... few places are as remote as a fly-out fishing lodge in the Alaskan bush.

“Where do you suppose he’s going?” I asked Rusty, the head guide, as I pushed a log deeper into the fire with my toe, sending a gentle column of sparks into the darkening sky. They trailed off down wind after the little wheel plane.

“West, by south west… my guess is somewhere between Togiak and Quinhagak” Rusty answered, “He’s chasing the sun and has a tail wind, but he'd better hurry… it’ll be plenty dark by the time he makes the coast.”

It was the first meeting at the “Back Forty” for the new season, and I was glad to have a few minutes with my old friend before the rest of the crew started to filter down from the lodge. This would be the first of many impromptu gatherings that would be the cement that held together a crew of strangers from all over the United States during a four-month summer of long days and demanding work.

“What’dya think of this year’s crew?” I asked tossing another spruce log into the fire.

“A good bunch.” He said, getting up and walking over to the old cabin. He ducked inside the low door and returned with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and two old tin cups. “It’s nice to have so many returning guides. What’s Lisa think of the gals?” He blew dust and spruce needles out of the cups.

“Oh… she’s happy to have Karen and Kelly back… they’re as solid as they get… time will tell with the rest.”

“What about the “Chefly” and his buddy?” He set the cups on a stump and poured out a measure into both.

“The guys from Maine? They’re the greatest…Lisa loves them… real pros.”

“How ‘bout the mechanic?” I asked.

He measured the cups critically with a well-practiced eye and handed me the one with less whiskey. “I’ve seen lots better… but he’ll do.”

I took the cup with a nod and swirled the amber warmth around it’s caramel coated inside… it’d been years since this cup had seen any water. “How many different guides do you suppose have warmed their hands on these cups?”

“Or, their insides…” He chuckled.

“What ‘dya think of the pilots?” I finally asked.

Neither of us were real pilots. And, though we could both pilot a plane, we had never taken on the enormous responsibility that comes with the job. Still, over the decades, we’d both spent many thousands of hours in and around floatplanes with dozens and dozens of pilots. Just as importantly we’d worked hand in hand with them through a lot of long and demanding seasons. We’d watched them come and go, and whether it was fair of us… or not… we considered ourselves to be fair judges of their ability and character.

“There’s never been a better pair than those two from Kodiak.” Rusty said admiringly. “What a find they were. The others seem solid too… especially the curly haired Danish guy… I thought he was going to cry with joy when he heard all of yoos Minnesoootans”

“Remember the kid who flew for us a couple of years ago? The one who beat The Boss in the annual casting contest.”

“Yup… I remember him. He grew up out in the bush, home schooled… the whole bit. Learned to fly tail-draggers early and was an aircraft mechanic to boot. The Boss hired him to twist wrenches and he flew the 206 for a season. He was flying supplies out to the lodge in a Beaver the next spring, right after the ice-out, when he started to loose oil pressure.”

“What’d he do?”

“Smart kid… he kept his cool, picked a good lake within range of his glide path and set the plane down. The Boss knew his flight plan and route so there was no doubt that someone would come looking for him in the morning. The plane was full of groceries and supplies… everything he needed… except, of course, the survival kit that included a sleeping bag. It seems that the last pilot to use the plane had taken it out to make extra room for cargo. “

“No kidding?”

“There was plenty of driftwood washed up on shore, so making a fire was easy. The only problem was that it was early in the spring and still really cold at night. There was nothing to break the wind and as hard as he tried, he couldn’t get close enough to the fire to stay completely warm… when he faced it, his back was cold… when he turned around his face cooled off. He couldn’t keep up the ‘human rotisserie’ routine all night, because he needed some sleep. So, he got a bunch of big round rocks and put them next to the fire to warm. When they were too hot to touch, he’d scoop one up in a couple of sweatshirts, crawl inside the plane with it and curl up around it for a couple of hours of sleep. When the rock got cold, he’d trade it for another.

“The Boss find him the next morning?”

“Yeah… and he’d already caught a couple of nice northern pike and had the fillets on the grill for lunch when he showed up.”

“What was the problem with the plane?”

“Just something minor… but the kid did the right thing setting it down. Last I heard he was flying Hercs for a civilian contractor in the Middle East, supplying the troops in Afghanistan.”

“What’s your buddy, the big Irish guy from Anchorage doing these days?” Rusty asked. “Still flying right seat in an Alaska Air 737?”

“Nope.” I answered proudly. “He’s a captain now… just got his left seat.”

“No kid’n.”

“Did I ever tell you about when he went down to Florida to get his instrument rating? He bought a little Champ while he was there and flew it all the way back to Anchorage. He said that there were times that the cars on the interstate he was following were passing him up!”

“That’s one way to build hours…”

“He’d stop along the way to camp out under his wings, but whenever he landed in someone’s’ field they’d always offered him a place to stay for the night.

When he started flying for The Boss, he used to do the early trips to the ‘Pak’ with the guides. One particularly nasty day, we were tooling around out on the flats south of Agenuk Mountain, looking for a way over the hump to the headwaters of Moose Creek, when he made the call to go back to the lodge. We were in a slow, wide, shallow turn, when we passed a spruce tree with… and, I kid you not… a Spruce Hen on one of the limbs! We were eyeball to eyeball as we went past. It reminded me of one of my favorite Lynn Bogue Hunt drawings… the one with the ruffed grouse on a spruce limb, backed up to the trunk, trying to make itself as small as possible as an owl flies past. I’m sure that grouse thought that we were the world’s biggest owl!”

“How ‘bout “The Pirate”… you remember him?” Rusty asked while splashing a bit more whiskey into our cups.

“Sure.” I answered. “Thanks… He grew up in Dillingham and when he was a little kid he used to go down to Shannon’s Pond to draw pictures of the planes taking off and landing. He got his pilot’s license at UND, and built hours in a plane that he bought with his mom.

Once, while he was beach combing on the Nushagak Peninsula, he set it down in some sand that was softer than he thought and his plane slowly nosed over as it came to a stop. As he tells it… the prop wasn’t even bent, and if he could have flipped it back over, he would have flown it back to Dilly. As it was, he needed some help… so he wrote a message on the beach with drift wood… not the usual SOS… but S.O.SHIT.”

“What ever happened to him?”

“He did his time with air taxi work, flew the turboprop for Penn Air, and helped us out for awhile. Now he flies for Alaska Air. When you think of it, a lot of good pilots have started out flying that 206 for the Boss.”

“Yeah, and don’t forget about old, ‘Good Golly’. Rusty added.

“Good Golly” was a quiet “feller” from South Carolina, who’d started as a bartender at the lodge. His mother would occasionally send him care packages of Grits, which he’d have for breakfast. Some of the guides from Minnesota had never actually seen grits and thought that it was some sort of joke. One of them once asked, “You mean… there really is such a thing? I thought it was just something on the Beverly Hillbillies!” No one took him up on his offer to share.

A quiet, gentle, and deeply religious man, his favorite expression when he was really excited was a hesitant and understated, “Well… Gosh”. After a few weeks of living in close proximity to all of the other guides, however, he loosened up a bit and it had degraded to a resounding, “Good Golly!”

“Good Golly” studied his flying manuals when things were quiet at the bar, and went on to get his pilot’s license, and his own plane, which he kept on his father’s farm. He flew banners over Myrtle Beach to build time and earn money. He went on to get his commercial, instrument, and float ratings, and then flew village air taxi through the winter, out of Kotzebue. Eventually, he’d flown that same 206 at the lodge for The Boss. I always felt comforted flying with old “Good Golly”… I figured if anything ever went wrong… that it’d help to have God on our side. I’d seen him last in Dillingham where he’d become the FAA station manager. He’d married a nice gal, who he met at the lodge, and has three beautiful little boys.”

“Not all of them have been so great to work with.” I added. “Remember the little short guy with the big Napoleon complex?”

“Oh yeah, the guy who had to sit on the boat cushions to see over the cowling… I remember him… his name was, Dan.”

“Yup, that’s him. He had a real problem with Lisa. He liked to hang out in the kitchen and play the big shot for the girls after dinner while they were trying to clean up around him… and he didn’t like Lisa telling him to get out.

So… one morning he’s fuming as he walks up to me on the dock… his little face is purple and the veins on his head were popping out. I thought that he was going to burst.

‘You better have a talk with your wife,’ He says to me, ‘Before I lose it with her.’

People are starting to gather around, mostly crew, but a few guests too. So I says to him, ‘Dan, three things… First, we both have jobs to do here this morning and we don’t have time for this… second, Lisa’s a big girl, and I don’t need to talk to her… if you can’t work this out with her, then that’s your problem.’

Now everyone on the dock is circled around, I mean there are so many people that the dock section we’re standing on is starting to swamp… ‘And, thirdly, you don’t want to loose it with Lisa because she’ll kick your little ass into next week!’

I remember him looking even shorter as he stormed off.”

“That old 206 has seen some characters in its day.” Rusty reminisced. “Remember old ‘Bear Snack’?”

“How could I forget!” I answered. “Jeeze, can you imagine the stones it’d take to play ‘dead’ through a bear mauling, then walk back into camp, and knock on one of the bunk house doors to ask for help?”

“The way I heard it,” Rusty continued, “ He apologized for bothering everyone and very politely let them know that he was a ‘bit messed up and needed some help’. The Boss had to fly way out to the east to get around the morning fog, before he could get him to Dillingham. Then they air evacuated him to Anchorage… and he was back out here flying again a few months later!”

“Hand me that bottle, will ya? Or, at least give me another bump,” I said handing Rusty my cup. “I need it after remembering that one. You know… he let Jakob, my ten-year-old son, fly that 206 out to the lodge from Dilly? Jake still talks about it.”

“One of the toughest pilots we know is also the quietest.” He offered, splashing another measure of bourbon in our cups.

“Of course”, I said, taking a sip “The ‘Bush Rat’. That guy’s done it all. One winter he was left as caretaker at a small lodge, way out in the backcountry, and for some reason the lodge owner was unable to fly out and supply him with fuel and food. As the ‘Rat’ tells the story, he ate all of the available food… whatever was left over from the season... and when that ran out, struggled through for weeks on whatever porcupines he could scavenge around the place. He gathered insulation around his sleeping bag at night to keep from freezing. When he’d finally had enough, he decided to walk out to the owner’s cabin, some 60 or 80 miles away, or as he said, ‘Just over a small mountain range.’ He made the hike spending several nights out on the trail. When he finally arrived, the owner’s daughter who was outside saw him coming toward the cabin and ran to the door calling out, “Daddy… he’s alive… he’s still alive!”

“That guy talks about having his ribs broken by a wounded moose as matter-of-factly as some of the guides might discuss being hooked by their fishermen.” Rusty said. “He’s a quiet man, bordering on being shy… and just might be the toughest guy I know.”

That meant a lot, coming from Rusty, one of the toughest guys that I know. We both turned to catch the sound of laughter. Lisa and the girls in the kitchen had finished with their cleaning, and they were finally making their way out to the “Back Forty”. The guides, gentlemen that they were, followed them. I rolled another log into the flames while Rusty hid the bottle, and I wondered if the pilot who’d flown over earlier in the evening had finally touched down safely at his destination. I hoped that there was someone waiting for him there, and I thought about all of the great pilots I’ve had the good fortune to work with over the years. It seems to me that they come in every shape and size… just like the rest of us… and defy categorization. Some look like the Tom Selleck, Hollywood version of a bush pilot, but the majority are the most unlikely looking of heroes.

As different as they all are, they also seem to share some common traits; Good pilots live their lives as they fly their planes… they never rush into a decision, preferring to look at the situation for a moment before making a judgment. Consequently, the pilots I’ve come to know and admire are uncommonly good judges of character.

They all have an unobtrusive willingness to teach and share what they know… but just when asked… and only if a genuine interest and aptitude is demonstrated.

The real heroes in life, or at a fishing lodge, are rarely the obvious ones. Sure, it’s easy to slap your guide on the back and buy him a drink after a day of big fish… but if you care to look a bit further… you’ll see a quiet man out on the porch, watching the lake calm and the colors soften. He won’t be holding court and telling stories for all to hear… that sort of thing isn’t of much importance to him. More than likely, you’ll have to ask him some questions and it’ll be a bit of a struggle getting him to open up and talk, but what he has to share is worth the effort.

Thanks for visiting,
Bob White

Postscript

Hemingway once defined courage, real courage, as “grace under pressure”. I believe that he was referring to the simple hunting of dangerous game, or merely bull fighting. Had he been a pilot, he might have said that courage is “a sense of humor when things have gone south”…

One stormy day, a young pilot from Maine, was charged with taking some duck hunters and me to a lonely and windswept salt marsh. The wind and waves wouldn’t allow us to land in the bay as we’d planned, so we circled looking for an alternative place to set down.

“How deep is that big round pond?” The pilot yelled over his shoulder to me. “Is it deep enough to land in?” He asked.

I’d walked that marsh a hundred times chasing ducks, but had never crossed that particular pond. All of the others were waist deep with soft bottoms. “Sure.” I yelled back over the noise of the big radial engine.

The wind buffeted us as we came in with a lot of flaps and practically hovered over the pond. He set the Beaver down masterfully and it came to a sudden and abrupt stop… in just a few inches of water.

He cheerfully took off his headset as he turned to us smiling and announced in his flinty Maine accent, “… Well… we’re here.”

Will Rogers, whose quote I use to introduce this tale, died in Western Alaska, near Point Barrow, on August 15th in 1935, while flying with his favorite bush pilot, Wiley Post. I like to think that at the very end, they were pleased to have lived in each other’s company.