ODDS’N’SODS — Zen and the art of bushpiloting

Late one autumn, while flying a missionary seaplane southward along the coastal mountains of British Columbia, I saw something that bush pilots rarely see.

I overtook two hummingbirds, apparently flying south on their annual migration. Improbable as it sounds, they were flying almost as fast as I was at the time. Their speed was estimated to be in excess of 80 miles per hour.

Some interesting lessons can be learned from watching birds. It occurred to me that we accord birds a degree of respect commensurate with their flying ability. Some of us do not have a great deal of respect for the dodo, or the emu, or the ostrich. We call them unsightly, or perhaps shambling.

But we have a great deal of respect for birds that really know how to fly with the wings Gold gave them — the falcon, or the hummingbird, or the wild goose, for example. The beat of wings always has spoken strongly to man. In our admiration, we have written of the “wings of the morning,” or the “flight of the spirit.”

When a pilot gets his “wings,” he is likely to take a renewed interest in everything else that flies. He does so out of interest, but also out of necessity. One of the first things he learns is the way in which different types of wings can be expected to behave.

A flying seagull will almost invariably dive to get away from a rapidly approaching seaplane, whereas a bald eagle will climb instead. Depending on whether the pilot is dealing with seagull wings or eagle wings, he adjusts his flight path to the anticipated pattern. On a steamer trip down the Inside Passage from Alaska, I spent considerable time near a porthole watching the gulls riding the wind currents of the vessel’s passage — with nary a movement of their wings.

One might call this type of flight “permissive,” in that it follows a path perfectly adapted to the wind currents and to the character of the local environment. No muscle power needed, no beating of wings, no breasting of adverse wind; just perfectly relaxed, permissive flight.

The wings of birds, like the wings of man’s spirit, are deserving of our attention. We see them being used for transcontinental journeys — straight courses at high speed and done with courage. We see wings that fold and dive away when any kind of threat appears. And we see other wings, which rise and climb under the same threat.

We also see faltering wings, whose flight path, once started, is always downhill. The very power to climb has been lost.

Then again, we see the permissive wings, which go where the breeze takes them, just doing what comes naturally at the moment.

And then, of course, we see a lot of birds that never fly at all, for one reason or another.

I stood at a fence in Vancouver’s lovely Stanley Park one day while some sort of bird looked me in the eye from the other side of the fence. He was the cassowary type, safely corralled behind a fence that came not higher than his own wings. But I don’t suppose he ever knew that he once could have flown over it. His predecessors’ failure to adapt had doomed all his race to flightlessness.

The bush pilot moves in a world filled with many kinds of wings: purposeful wings, diving wings, climbing wings, wings used only occasionally, wings immobilized by lack of use, wings atrophied completely. On the ground, men are equipped with similar kinds of spiritual wings.

— A former geologist, the author is now an ordained minister who lives in Nelson, B.C. His article is based on his experience as the pilot of the United Church of Canada’s first church-owned missionary seaplane, and as skipper of two of that church’s West Coast missionary fleet.