Annie Dillard On Flying and Writing

Type A’s, like me, resist surrendering control to anyone. Yet every time I board an airplane, I do exactly that. I don’t know the pilot and the pilot doesn’t know me.

So what do I do? Finding my seat, I think about something else.

Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life concludes with a chapter on flight. From page 93 to 111, Annie describes her acquaintance with a stunt pilot named Dave Rahm.

First, at an air show, she watched Dave Rahm “write an intelligent message in the sky . . . like a brush marking thin air.”

Later, given the opportunity to fly in a single engine plane Dave Rahm piloted, Annie vividly describes her extraordinary experience.

You can do that, you know, describe what happened, only if you walk away after the plane lands.

Dave Rahm flew Annie to see the Cascade Mountains.

“The Cascades,” she said, “make the Rockies look like hills.” In Washington state, Mt. Ranier stands at 14,411 feet, the highest peak in the Cascade range.

Annie’s experience prompted me to write, first in the margins of her book and then in my journal about a flight in Alaska I had taken. Since I could relate to her words ––the parallel she makes to writing––I wanted to share my own experience on flying.

North to Alaska. “Aaa-las-kahhh!” (The Proposal)

Beyond the Cascades, located in Denali National Park, the Alaska range boasts Mt. Denali, the highest point in North America. Elevation 20,310 feet, it stands as the largest mountain in the world––base to peak.

On my flight to see Mt. Denali, instead of a pen, I carried a camera. My Nikon D300 (2.8 70–200mm and 2.8 17–55mm lenses) afforded options for up close and personal both inside and outside the cockpit.

My camera kept me fastened to the moment, taking pictures instead of thoughts flitting around fear.

“No guarantee you will see the mountain,” the contract I signed had stipulated. Likely I had signed a waiver on death as well.

Told that Mt. McKinley (Denali’s former name) is visible only 20% of the time, taking off on a cloudy day felt less than promising.

Yes, this is not Disneyland. You might crash and burn.

Annie describes her fascination with flight as a “newcomer’s willingness to try anything once.”

“I gave up on everything,” Annie writes, “the way you do in airplanes; it was out of my hands.”

She’s right, you know. Unless you or I pilot a plane, we do give up control when boarding any airplane.

Too late to wonder Where am I and how did I get here? Now, I am Rocket Man, “and I think it’s gonna be a long, long time till touchdown brings me ’round again . . .”

I kept my eye on the pilot. Seated where I was, I could watch his movements. Here, in flight, he selects music on his iPod.

Ho-hum. He’s not worried, why should I worry?

Annie describes a passenger’s perspective of the pilot, ” . . . half circle of wheel in their big hands looks like a toy they plan to crush in a minute, the wiggly stick the wheel mounts seems barely attached.”

It’s all out of my hands. Wearing your seat belt, aren’t you?

Small plane vs commercial jet:  Am I scared yet?

First of all, this small plane is loud. LOUD! The headset I wear muffles the noise.

Up there, stomach pitching, mind spinning, ears popping, I try hard not to think about invisible means of support, far above the earth, thousands of feet in the air.

Don’t look down. Look out.

The bumps. The drops, sudden and unforeseen––it’s not like driving a car where you can navigate the road ahead, follow the lines, pick a lane, watch the shoulder, and then look ahead to see what potholes lie in the path.

Air currents at high altitude lift and swirl, batting at the plane like an insect.

The plane pitched and dropped and zig-zagged through the air. The girl in the seat behind me has used her airbag the entire flight.

Thoughts drift: I am Jonah swallowed by a big fish, beneath the sea, terrified yet hopeful because unlike Jonah, I am not the first person to trip with this guy. He must be good.

The camera makes clouds look like waves crashing against the shore of that mountain. The sky above mirrors the sea. Or is it vice versa?

Annie writes, “Our plane swiped the mountain with a roar . . . our shaking, swooping belly seemed to graze the snow.”

And that made me think of this picture I took. The plane’s wing tilted, flying so close to the mountain that it appeared the wing could cup the snow, as one might dip and measure flour.

Skywriting or paper trails, an ordinary person performs

What Annie Dillard wrote, if I follow her meaning throughout this chapter, parallels a writer’s attempt to keep in mind, all at once, the story he or she wants to tell.

Watching Dave Rahm write in the sky using his airplane, Annie describes her sensations.

“It had taken me several minutes to understand what an extraordinary thing I was seeing. Rahm kept all that embellished space in mind at once. For another 20 minutes I watched the beauty unroll  and grow more fantastic and unlikely before my eyes. Now Rahm brought the plane down slidingly, and just in time, for I thought I would snap from the effort to compass and remember the line’s long intelligence; I could not add another curve. He brought the plane down on a far runway. After a pause, I saw him step out, an ordinary man, and make his way back to the terminal.”

Annie Dillard marveled at Dave Rahm’s ability as a pilot and I, sitting in my comfortable chair reading her description, marvel at her ability as a writer to take me there with her––”to follow the line’s long intelligence” of her story.

To see, to feel, and relate. To react. To respond.

For the writer must write with spell-binding art and craft in order to hold the reader’s attention while suspending the reader’s realization that an ordinary person has performed this writing feat. SNAP.

Coming in for landing …

“I had a survivor’s elation,” is how Annie put it.

And that’s how I too would describe my relief and ecstasy when the plane touched down on the runway.

Once on the ground again, I ponder for a few brief moments how I came to trust my life to a stranger.

What made me climb into and go up, up and away in a metal tube to MAYBE see a mountain, a mountain unperturbed by uninvited visitors who strain, hoping to see its face?

I don’t have a bucket list, so this wasn’t that.

I took my chances and my shot

The “money shot,” as they say in the movie business, this print won 2nd place at the Tri-State Fair that year.

A framed 16×20 hangs on my wall, bigger and better than a postcard, declaring each time I pass by, “I was there. Joined the 20% club.”

Selected images:

We flew above vast uninhabited wilderness, desolate but beautiful. No place to get lost.

Approaching, first glimpse of Mt. Denali, Clouds, please, let me get a peek at the peak.

Flying away, wave “Bye-bye, Baby, bye-bye.”