I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of flight. From birds to dragons, to airplanes -things that can fly, to flying myself. And now it’s creeping into my fiction – in the novel I’m shopping around right now, there are multiple characters who are pilots and flying plays a huge part in the plot. It seems inevitable, looking back, that I would eventually start writing about flying – the only thing that stopped me before was not knowing anything about planes besides the basic theory of aerodynamics. I figured writing about them is the closest I’ll get to flying them myself.
So I’m going to do a series of posts about planes, and my experiences with flight.
My first experience was at Crow Duck Lake, on the Whiteshell. My Dad’s got a family friend who runs a fishing resort out there, and we used to go out there every year. Bill, my Dad’s friend, had a little yellow Twin Otter docked by the beach, and one day he took us up in it. After that, the first time I was on a commercial aircraft, it was nowhere near as exciting.
It’s not for everyone – people who are afraid of flying would handle that even worse than a commercial plane. I loved it, and I can’t even describe what it is that I love about it. I’ve been up in a small plane once since then – a Cub, flown my my mother’s second husband’s father (my step-grandfather at the time, and yeah, my mom’s on her third husband, so I can’t even just say my step-grandfather.)
Being in a small plane like that, it’s a completely different experience. You can see better, out the windows, and where you’re going, more like you can see out of a car. You can see the ground, and the lakes all around. You can feel being in the sky.
Lindsay Kitson - Author and Pilot 
I wonder if it is this kind of vision and excitment that people need to have generally, whether it’s through flying or sailing or walking or maybe spotting a rare bird or animal in it’s native environment, there’s something very healthy about the sense of excitment. There’s also something very healthy about people, who, if they were to talk about religion or politics or sport might disagree sharply, but who can find a shared interest and delight in it. So having a sense of vision and delight and being able to share it is important.
There’s not enough ‘wonder’ in the world of the kind I think Lindsay’s alluding to in this post. Whether or not we ourselves enjoy flight we can probably learn from her enthusiasm
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