The asphalt is nearly black from the overnight rains as I roll the Smith out of the hangar. The weather report tells me that the ceiling is unlimited but the skies are an endless and dull grey with the sun appearing as a pulsating, ecru glob. Just down the ramp, the Decathlon is firing up for a morning of circuits at the nearby Gatineau airport. Across the field, one after the other, engines clatter to life and join the chorus.
It's barely 8 in the morning and the field is already alive. The weather prognosticator has foretold of poor weather on the way, high moisture and searing heat as harbingers of screaming winds and cruel thunderstorms. The forecast contains the ominous line VRB30G50 - variable winds at 30 knots with gusts to 50 - for early afternoon. At present, all three windsocks hang motionless on their brackets - not a breath of wind.
The air is still cool but tinged with a buzz of electricity - and it will warm up quickly to what will be perhaps the last truly searing day of the summer.
The takeoff roll is completed as if the little bipe is on rails. We glide along the runway with only occasional taps of my right foot to keep her button nose straight. She needs a fair amount of forward stick to get the tail to fly but responds immediately when asked. With the whole of the field now unfurled before us, I relax just a shade of forward stick and the Smith flies herself off the ground. The wings shed their heaviness as the Lycoming drives us ahead and upwards. We settle into the climb.
A bank away from the shoreline, across the Ottawa, then over the hatching of Gatineau and then a slight right turn to following her river northwest.
It's muggy but warm and getting warmer. The sun's rays are fighting through the curtains of haze and moisture blanketing the hills. The earth, now roused by the building heat, stirs - exhaling great mountains of mist that pleadingly reach skywards. They rise like ghostly castles - here, from a small lake nestled between a pair of rolling Gatineau foothills; there, from a small bay carved out of the flank of the river. Around these battlements, the Smith and I weave - slowly plowing northwestwards, the Lycoming labouring as it takes greedy mouthfuls of the moisture laden air. We circumvent one to port, the next to starboard - calling on each of the feather-like fortifications as they billow and swell. Passing through these columns of cloud, we could very well be at ten times our current paltry height of 1700 feet.
I ease the stick back and the murky horizon sinks below the cowling. We trade about 5 miles per hour for a slow, enroute climb of about 200 feet per minute. My left hand rests lightly on the throttle because it has a tendency to creep forward. As we're carried aloft by invisible hands, we start a slight right turn to follow the river.
I know precisely where we are. We've just passed the village at Wakefield and just ahead to the right is the famed covered bridge. We're some 15 miles north of where the mouth of the Gatineau spills into the Ottawa. And yet, a glance over my right shoulder suggests we've travelled much further than that while flagrantly violating the laws of time.
The capital has vanished - hiding behind curtains of shimmering mist. The hills are still and frozen - wearing silken shrouds that evoke images of the heat and humidity of the Java Coast or the forbidden wildness of the Amazon valley. Truly, in some twenty minutes of flying, we've managed to vault halfway across the globe and back to a time when a machine such as this was a marvelous incongruity.
I know of few vehicles that wield this sort of power - the ability to bend time and space so as to place the occupant into the goggles and gauntlets of Bishop, Lindbergh, Blériot, Johnson, Kingsford Smith or Saint-Exupéry.
Sainte-Cécile-de-Marsham now creeps up to reveal herself just beyond the left cheek of the Smith's cowling. She could very well be the Patagonian outpost of San Julian - Fabien's safe harbour in Exupéry's Night Flight - rather than the touristic jewel of Quebec's La Pêche region.
We turn left to follow a set a power lines that climb a lower saddle in the Gatineaus. The spindly towers march up the hills in fractions, dragging their high-tension charges with them. I imagine the cutline to be not unlike China's Great Wall in profile if not in distance.
The altimeter announces our arrival at 3000 feet. The air here is cooler but still heavy - almost wet. Visibility, predictably, has worsened. The hills that were clearly visible only minutes before have bashfully sunk into the murk. Light from the sun struggles to leak through to us - rather, it bounces and refracts between endless cataracts - giving the sky a rough, crystalline appearance.
We crest the hill and, abandoning the path given us by the power lines, negotiate a descent into the flatlands beyond. There lies a different elbow of the same river we crossed at the start of this odyssey and, on the other shore, a few bays, a small lake and more fields framed by a scattering of woods.
Given the Smith's vertical fin is not offset, I always fly with a measure of right rudder so as to avoid skidding, undignified, through the air. The air is so still that, other than slight pressure against the right pedal, I've hardly touched the controls.
I give the Smith a boot of each rudder pedal and we fishtail playfully. The flying wires moan their disapproval as the slipstream batters the Smith's fabric flanks. We roll to the left. The ailerons are blissfully light - making any turning maneuver delightfully easy. Now, a gentle climb. The feedback in the elevators is heavier, though, and gives the impression of flying a much larger airplane. As the energy bleeds away, a deft addition of left aileron with the gentlest application of pro-roll rudder and we fall off the summit and earthward again.
It's hard to believe that my cap and goggles forebears, though stoically all business, didn't screw around like this every so often.
We fly southwest towards home and through the curtains laid one upon the other. As each one is thrown aside, more is revealed in the exact reverse order as it disappeared. The air remains still. Nothing has changed.
A short time later, the chirp and rumble of the wheels kissing the runway signals the end of yet another flight of fancy characterised by the following precisions roughly scribbled in my notebook:
Start: 0810
Up: 0816
Down: 0918
Stop: 0922
Flight time: 1.2 hours
Air Time: 1.0 hours
Fuel burn: 6.25 gallons
Distance travelled: ?
Remarks: 5 gallons added prior. Oil Temp: 80, Oil PSI: 80, CHT: 300. Local, NW along Gat Riv to...
And here, I stop. Is it enough to say "...Wakefield, Ste-Cécile-de-Marsham, W over Gat Hills, then SW Luskville, Breckenridge, escarpment to return"? While that's certainly an accurate portrayal of the flight, it hardly does it justice. Should it not say "NW to Java Coast, on to Amazon, W to Patagonia, over Russian steppes to China, turned left and came home"? And, if so, would, years later, a son or daughter look upon my notes and think "the old man's always been batty...how could he have visited the Orient, Java and the entire South American continent in that little crate in only an hour?"
My hope is that, one day, they might understand.
As I push the Smith back into her corner of the hangar, the Decathlon taxies up and shuts down just outside. As the pilots climb out, I ask how their flight went.
"Good," replies the instructor. "Wheel landings. Gatineau was busy. Where did you go?"
I jerk my thumb over my right shoulder. "That way," I reply with a shrug.
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