WASILLA, ALASKA: WHERE THAT LONESOME WHISTLE BLOWS
This morning’s northbound ARR Aurora Winter Train passes by two planes, one on floats, the other wheels, tied down on the southeast end of Lake Lucille. I see no tracks to indicate either has moved all winter - waiting for summer, I guess. When we came to Alaska from Arizona in 1981, my dream was to become a bush pilot photographer with the big, broad, north under my wings; to fly where I wanted to go, when I wanted, with little time spent in Alaska’s cities. I got a taste of that dream when, in 1986, a $10 a barrel oil recession caused a big out-migration from Alaska. Private pilots sold airplanes cheap. The one I bought my Citabria 7GCBC from did not leave Alaska, but his wife told him to stop flying and sell his plane. He did, cheap. The Alaska Permanent Fund was big that year, the family all contributed and I managed to buy “The Running Dog” for $15,900 cash. It was the one and only time in my life when I could have pulled off such a feat. For the next 15 years I flew that plane year around, on big tires in summer, skis in winter. I flew it to many places on the main body of Alaska, up and down the Yukon River, the Kuskokwim, the Brooks Range, and between all the villages on Alaska’s Arctic Coast and into Canada’s Yukon and Northwest Territories. The dream ended on on September 22, 2001, when I crashed in Kate John’s Mentasta backyard. Well, not quite in her backyard - but close. I walked away, uninjured. But it hurt… Oh, did it hurt! And I felt mighty embarrassed when Alaska Governor Tony Knowles and Heather Kendall-Miller, Katie’s attorney, drove up the stretch of road I had attempted to land on just as a surprise gust of wind caught my left wing and pushed me into two black spruce. It would have cost about $50,000 to rebuild the plane; even more to purchase another of same vintage and condition. With both brain and heart surgeries behind me now, I could not get a medical even if the means to buy another plane were to come my way. But I do have Sancho the drone to help me take photographs such as this. |
