A religious experience

As the summer grew older our collective confidence increased.  While not yet relaxed, I was certainly more comfortable flying my new mount.  The Smith, while not yet completely trusting of her new jockey, allowed herself more, and longer moments of carefree aerial play.  I consider myself a grounded dreamer; completely aware of the gravity of my craft while allowing myself to believe that airplanes, while built as machines, possess a certain human aura.
I privately refer to it as a soul.  Like-minded aviators will understand my meaning.  The more secular reader may not.
When I was a young reporter, I was sent to cover the public opening of a local billionaire pilot's impressive stable of vintage airplanes.  One of my interviews was with the chief pilot and, when I asked him the absolutely asinine question of "what's it like to fly these things?" he said:
"At the risk of sounding cliche, Jonathan, it's a religious experience."
I loved the clip but did I really understand?  Was he being dramatic?
At the time, I had only just started dabbling in tailwheel flying and had less than an hour of aerobatics.  The bulk of my sparse time was in bovine Cessna products and slightly more refined Piper Cherokees.  I loved flying more than anything but, no, I don't think I understood.
I do now.
And so, as my ease grew, so too did the Smith's.  I swear that, as I slackened my grip on the stick, I could feel the tension melt out of her and fall away through the summer heat.  Her wings bit into the thin air with such a ferocity that I felt she was happy to be up here again, bobbing around in her natural element.  The propeller took greedy gulps of new air, driving us forward with each pass of its blades.  The flying wires hummed and whistled a tune in harmony with the Lycoming's bass track. The balance had been restored.  All was right with the world.
This continued as long as I kept things as they should be.
If I lingered too long while orbiting a small town and perhaps allowed the ball to wander as much as a millimeter...or if I touched down with too much speed and skipped back into the air, I could feel her bristle.  I had betrayed myself - given the Smith just enough to recall that it was no longer Al's hand guiding her but mine.
We began again, anew, each time.

The Smith and her home after a summer afternoon flight.  (Author's Collection)

This education, however, is nothing short of a love affair.
These summer days came in two variants.  The first, warm and clear under violent blue skies, prodded you into turning your face heavenward to be caressed by the outstretched hands of the golden sun.  You wore the second like a heavy, wet mantle.  These days cloaked all the world in sheets of silken mist and made the most familiar landmarks seem alien.  On such days, heavy with sweat and steam, one viewed the world as if passing through curtains hung one upon the next.
On these days, I stayed close to the field to practice take-offs and landings.  I very rarely stayed up for more than three or four circuits as the workload was high and, by virtue of the Smith's speed and gliding ability, wedged into unmercifully short periods of time.  Each one of these flights progressed in the same manner: my first landing was always tentative, the second was always a marked improvement of the first, the third was perhaps the best of them all and the fourth was so humbling it persuaded me to call it a day.  I always emerged from the Smith's cockpit soaked in sweat - as much from exertion as from the heat.

The Smith's cockpit.  (Author's Collection)

On those warm, clear days, I would pick a direction and endeavor to discover what lay on the far side of the nearest horizon.  Given our lack of a transponder, a southerly heading was ill-advised, illegal and surely upsetting to the man (or woman) moving glowing green blips around a screen deep inside the bowels of a basement bunker.  Still, that left us with the three remaining cardinal directions of North, East and West.
One one such foray east, somewhere past Orleans but not quite yet upon Rockland, a brief conversation with a good friend and aerobatic student, crept into my mind.  He'd mentioned he owned a farm house across from a large field where, years ago, he'd landed an Aeronca Champ.  I hadn't seen much of him this season owing to the fact that he'd spent the bulk of his time installing solar panels on the roof of his barn.  A thought seized me: didn't he say his place was around here somewhere?
I looked over the side and, much to my amazement, there was a large barn just under my left main wheel.  The barn's roof was covered in solar panels.  I swung my head out the other side and, with the bipe bobbing beneath me, spied a large field that was certainly suitable to land a little taildragger.
Could it be?
Had I stumbled upon this very place by accident?  And why did my memory of the conversation choose to reintroduce itself at this very moment where, high above these patchwork fields and surrounded by such beauty, I had plenty of cause of think of anything else?
As if to answer my query, my friend's red van came crawling down the long, winding, gravel lane towards the barn and farmhouse.  I swung the airplane around into a tight orbit.  Yes, it must be him - there's no denying it!  What luck!
I roll the Smith out of the turn, draw the throttle back and shed a few hundred feet as I swing around again for another pass.  The van is still now but half masked in shadow from the barn.  I am sure I can see a tiny figure far below, standing just to the side of the red van.  I imagine he's shading his eyes against the August sun, gazing up at this little airplane and its movements that seem far too precise to be chance alone.
I waggle my wings, claw into a wingover and return for another pass - again waggling my wings in greeting.  There can be no mistaking my intent.  I only hope it truly is my friend standing next to that van in the shade of the barn.
When I return to Rockcliffe and dig my phone out of my jacket, my hunch is validated by a series of enthusiastic text messages, each more flattering than the last.

The Smith, at altitude, against a beautiful blue sky.  (Picture courtesy: Charles Clark)

"You should come out and see our place!"  I'm finishing up at work, gathering my things to sneak off to the airport and steal away for a half hour in the Smith.  My colleague recently bought a lovely home in Chelsea on the shores of the Gatineau River.
"Sure," I answer, pulling out a chart.  "Show me where you are."
An hour later, the Smith and I are launching into the early evening sky above the old air force base at Rockcliffe.  We make a slight turn to the north and settle in for the climb to 1700 feet.
The Gatineau, at least today, is a Prussian blue - a wide slash through the southern extremities of the great Canadian Shield.  On either side, verdant flanks of the Gatineau Hills plunge sharply into the river's shores.  The Smith and I drone up this valley, careful to always stay within gliding distance of a field should the engine commit treason.  These fields, of which there are few in this valley, act as islands of salvation and the Smith and I alter our heading so as to hop from one to the next.
The float plane base at Chelsea crawls by.  My eyes search for my target: a dock jutting out into the river and adorned with two bright red kayaks.  I make a few passes over the dock and the house but fail to rouse any response from below.  Intent on making the most of this flight, I continue up the valley to the north - first to Chelsea and then Wakefield.
Wakefield holds a special place in my heart.  There's a fresh water spring, just outside of town, where my parents took my sister and I, nearly every weekend, to fetch water.  I remember the clang the metal trap door made when my dad threw it open and how the sound echoed down the cavernous mouth of the spring.  I remember the ferocity with which the water sprang forth and how cold it felt when my dad, with one arm wrapped around my waist, allowed me to lean forward into the void to collect some water.  I recall the drives, long and winding before the highway was built, and how we passed a number of gas stations with those old fashioned pumps.
More than two decades later, my wife and I honeymooned at the Wakefield Mill - where we ate our fill of steak frites, cheered on our football team in front of a crackling fire and spent an unforgivable sum on red wine and single malt scotch.  In the morning, with the sound of the river gasping through stands of old pines, we walked down to the village and along the old railway tracks, jumping from rotting tie to tie.  Every once in a while, my ears picked up the familiar, throaty hum of an aero engine and I would turn my face skyward and squint, searching.
Looking down now, eyes soft behind my goggles, I wonder if anyone down there is searching for me, drawn by the sound of my engine.
My eyes catch the iconic covered bridge at Wakefield.  Built in 1915 and destroyed by fire in 1984 before being rebuilt more than a decade later, it is one of the region's most photographed landmarks. From my vantage point, it appears as little more than a collection of crimson matchsticks dissecting the midnight blue slab that is the Gatineau River.
I elect to return southbound along the river and call again at my colleague's home.  After a few orbits, a figure walks down the dock towards the kayaks and stops by the river's edge.  I waggle my wings and I'm certain he's waving his arms in reply.  Another pass, another friendly dip of the wings and I rattle off for home.
The westerly flights are long, lazy tours.  They involve shooting a narrow alley between the Ottawa VOR and the communications tower crowning the ski hill at Camp Fortune before turning north west and skirting the Gatineau Hills escarpment.  These flights often include calling on the drag strip at Luskville and the now abandoned fly-in community at Pontiac before climbing and crossing the river into Ontario.  Here, eyes sharpened by the increase in general traffic, the Smith and I would ply the skies over Dunrobin Road from Constance Bay to Constance Lake before turning east for home.
For me, this is familiar territory as I've spent more than ten years flying in these parts.  However, in the Smith, I feel as though I'm viewing this landscape for the first time.  I'm always impressed by the beauty and simplicity in how the quilt of fields are stitched together. When the sun is high in the sky, the greens, browns and golds shimmer with intensity.  As the sun dips and the angle grows steeper, the field's deepen in color and seem to melt into an emerald sea with golden crests and cold, gray troughs.  The Ottawa river, snaking away to the west beyond Arnprior, reflects the sun as silver flashes off slashes of wet concrete.  The sky, hitherto such an emphatic blue, fades into a thin, endless slate.
There is a chill in the air.  A glance at the fuel gauge by my left knee convinces me to turn tail and flee for home.  Ten minutes later, back-lit by the setting sun, my wheels kiss pavement and the reverie ends for now.

Landing runway 09 at Rockcliffe after a late afternoon flight.  (Photo Courtesy Peter Szperling)

Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the great aviator and author, once wrote: "and now here is my secret, a very simple secret; it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye."
These are lofty words, yes, but so very simple.
From atop my perch, balanced on the wind, I have seen and understood the magnificence of our world.  If one, regardless of their leanings or persuasions, cannot see God in so much beauty then they are truly blind.