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Wednesday, April 12, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Going solo
One of the more reliable
signs of spring is the return
of the redwinged blackbirds.
No matter what the calendar
says, it’s only when I see
them down in the meadow
below our place, the males
singing on a fenceline, or
ganging up on ravens to
chase them off the nesting
territory, that I’m ready to
call it spring and actually
believe it. Redwings are
a migratory bird, and can
travel up to 800 miles from
their summer homes to win-
ter in better climes.
Lucky bastards.
Last week my wife and I
completed our own migra-
tion of sorts, travelling south
to watch my daughter’s
first airplane solo at Stead
Airport, near Reno.
As parents, there may be
nothing finer than watching
our children consumed by
fruitful and productive pas-
sions at a young age, and to
watch their confidence and
maturity grow as they com-
mit to excellence and mas-
tery of a study, or a skill,
or a task. This is especially
true if they can build a career
around it, and find a lifetime
of rewarding challenges,
experiences and relation-
ships in the offing.
My daughter ’s pas-
sion for aviation is perhaps
genetically inevitable, and it
has infected her with some-
thing of the same irreverent
zeal enjoyed by the infa-
mous Mme. Pancho Barnes,
legendary barnstormer, stunt
pilot, and patroness of the
Happy Bottom Riding Club,
who told the world that
“Flying makes me feel like a
sex maniac in a whorehouse
with a stack of $20 bills.”
Pilots are nothing if they
aren’t colorful, vibrant, and
understandably impious. My
daughter is becoming all of
those things, and I couldn’t
be happier.
Stead Airport, which is
home to the famous Reno
Air Races, is also an airport
I have flown out of count-
less times with my father,
who kept a hangar there,
and where ultimately, on a
perfect day for flying, he
unexpectedly, and tragically,
drew his last breath. Seven
years after his death on the
same airfield, it was difficult
to avoid the notion that his
Quiet Birdman soul was in
a pattern somewhere over-
head, his chest filled with
pride as his granddaughter
— who he took on her first
airplane ride as a small child
— kicked her instructor out
of the plane and greased
an extended series of solo
touch-and-go’s.
Those thoughts, which
I indulged to some length
as we stood out on the tar-
mac anchored with joy and
memories and cameras,
engendered a kind of deeply
rooted emotional migra-
tion. Watching my daughter
lift off into the sky alone, I
thought — and it was some-
thing more like a revelation
— that it was only after my
father died that I ever truly
soloed as a man in the world.
My accomplishments were
my own, as were my fail-
ures, but he had always been
there, his hands and exper-
tise not exactly on the con-
trols, but somewhere reliably
near them, and then suddenly
he wasn’t there at all, and I
was flying truly alone for the
first time.
That’s brutally honest.
Maybe too much so. But it’s
also at the heart of relation-
ships, particularly when they
are good ones, the kind we
don’t celebrate enough when
they are active, and mourn
deeply when they are lost.
My father had a long run-
ning obsession with World
War II heavy bombers and,
in joyful coincidence, there
happened to be a B-17 on the
ramp. It was the Aluminum
Overcast, which is a kind
of airborne living-history
museum, and makes numer-
ous stops around the country
each year so that pilots and
history buffs can fly in it,
or tour the aircraft’s storied
compartments on the ground.
Delivered to the U.S. Army
Air Corps in May, 1945, the
Overcast didn’t see action
in World War II, but flies on
today informing the imagi-
nation of thousands.
After the solo, I jumped
in the backseat of the little
Cessna 172 and flew with
my daughter and her instruc-
tor back to Reno, sharing the
sky for a moment with that
B-17, which departed just
before us, and finally land-
ing beautifully on runway
1-6-Left, where my own
father and I had also landed
hundreds of times, in all
kinds of weather.
Taxiing back to the han-
gar, and frankly, gloating, I
felt somehow that I had just
been through an emotional
and invisible change-of-
command ceremony, as if I
had taken the unit’s colors
from my father, saluted him
and his memory smartly,
and handed them over to
my daughter, who will now
carry them forward into the
future.
What I felt was pride.
Immeasurable pride, but
also, inescapably, an abid-
ing sorrow that the old man
wasn’t around to see his
granddaughter, whom he
loved, take up the standard.
For now, it’s allegedly
spring, though yesterday it
was snowing at our place.
The redwings aren’t here yet,
but when I close my eyes I
can see them, somewhere
between south and north,
winging their way in our
direction. They are flying
back to the meadow down
below the hill, where they
will spend the summer. They
will lay their eggs down
there, in that perfect Cascade
habitat, and a mere 15 days
after they hatch, those new-
est birds will take to the sky
by themselves, truly alone
for the first time in their
lives.
And while we are busy
doing what we do into the
fall, one day they will fly
up, mostly unnoticed, enter
the pattern, and continue
the timeless cycle, drawn
inexorably to their own
migrations.
And may it ever be so.