The Place I was Before
Kevin Adler
Most customers who sign on for flight lessons in the Cesna 150 I call Lucille aren’t looking to learn how to fly. They want to tour the sights, the sights they’ve seen a thousand times before, the landmarks they’ve never left, only from a different angle. They’ll ask to fly over their own house then remark on the peeled shingles, or fly over the high school and lament the good old days. If I’m lucky, they’ll give me a choice and I’ll fly them just outside of town, over Long Lake, and tip a wing. The bedrock bottom glimmers a hundred feet below the surface, clear as glass, and the slow forms of lake sturgeon stalk the floor like shadows of the clouds.
This morning I decide to fly over my own house, so I’m hardly different. Someone had canceled an air taxi to Peaks Island earlier and instead of kicking around the office and flirting with Brenda, our secretary, I take off alone. Two minutes out, I’m buzzing over the roof of my house. It’s a sunny day, only the wisp of a cloud at my wing. My daughter is in the sandbox below and our dog, Jimmy,… Read more »