Columbia Gorge off the wing
It was my father’s shift at the wheel, so I kept my eyes
peeled for other airplanes and handled the radio. Looking out at the familiar deep green of
western Oregon,
I spotted a few of my favorite waterfalls spilling into the river. Salmon boats were everywhere beneath us,
lines out for what small runs of salmon still remained in the river. Some years, I’d been hearing they only had 20
salmon counted on the fish ladders. Other years it would be more. Apparently, this river used to team with so many salmon, it was as if
you could walk across the river on their backs. Tribes like the Nez Pierce, Umatilla, Warm Springs and Yakima used to fish here. It was easy to air dry the salmon the further
east you went as it became less prone to rainfall and more arid. Although we eventually turned the plane north
when we reached The Dalles on the eastern side of the Cascades, if we were to
keep going we would eventually hit some of the most rugged country in the
west.
Eastern Oregon is a secret place in a way. A desert that
few know about. Harsh rocky landscapes mostly
inhabited by ranchers and Indian reservations. There are a few small towns here and there. And its beauty is haunting. Precisely because of what it lacks. I've also met my share of weird and potentially violent people there as well, but hey, that's the west for you.
But we were intent on getting to the border by
nightfall. It’s not recommended to land
a seaplane at night on the water for obvious reasons. We had one refueling stop at Lake Chelan
before we hit the Okanagan Valley.
Lake Chelan was a boater’s lake, but it didn’t have the look of overuse. Typically on some seaplane stops you could see it right away in some lakes. Trash
dotting the banks, the scum of oil and gasoline rainbowed on the skin of the
water. Some lakes had turned a thick and
perpetual green from pollution. But this one was crystal clear.
Lake Chelan, Eastern Washington
An older man in a cowboy hat greeted us at the boat
marina. Long ago my dad, who is also an
airplane mechanic, had rigged the engine of his Cessna seaplane with a
converter that could use boat fuel instead of aviation fuel. This made everything easier. So we were able to hop from lake to lake this
way and as long as there were boat marinas, we were usually in good shape.
Since we were still outside of Canada and Alaska,
the water skiers on the dock openly gaped at the plane as we taxied up. I assumed my usual position on the float
behind the strut and well away from the prop blur. We had a routine, my father and I. He would cut the engine about 10 feet out
from the dock and I would swing myself under the strut with the rope in hand
and make sure I got off on the dock and steadied the plane while I tied up the pontoon
to a cleat. When I was nine, my dad used
to have an older plane that needed the propeller to be turned by hand in order
to start the engine. He taught me how to
do this when I was nine years old. I was
the only one who went with him to the salt marshes near where I grew up to keep
him company while he worked on the engine every weekend. Then one day he showed me how to hold onto
the strut with one hand and how to lean way over to grab the prop with my
other.
“Here, you do it like this,” he would say and with all his
might he would swing the tip of the propeller down, “see, it’s not hard. You just hold on and swing it down and pull
your arm back real fast.”
Pulling the arm back really fast was key to the entire
success of engine starting as it didn’t help if I was going to lose an
arm. I don’t believe we ever told my
mother about my talent. All I knew is
that it took a good three years before it didn’t scare the shit out of me to do
anymore. But being a kid, I loved the
attention I got when at any given lake, other kids would see me hand propping
the engine while perched precariously on the float. The envy was clear. They may have been jetting about on a ski
boat, but everyone had a ski boat. Hell,
we had a vintage seaplane. He would prop
open his plexiglas window and thrust his sun burnt arm out in a casual manner, “You
ready?” he’d ask. I’d swallow and give a
nod hiding my fear. “Okay, clear?,” I
would look around for any boats or swimmers, “Clear!” I shouted back. “Ok, magnetos are on. Contact!” and then I would do my job. I’d lean into something that could surely
kill me and start it by hand.
After Lake Chelan, we took
off. It was my turn at the helm. I’d be making the landing at the border. As we checked the weather on the radio, I was
especially attentive to the wind gusts. Fifteen knots at Lake
Okanagan. That was the maximum the plane could handle
when landing. And in our classic style,
we said nothing about this to one another. Things were always silently implied in our relationship. In short, my dad had no clue what to do with
a daughter. So he dealt with me in the
only ways he knew how. Silence. Anger. Sometimes quick and brief bursts of violence. He was essentially a good man but he carried a
lot of baggage inside. Emotions
were no longer part of his vocabulary. Somehow, growing up, I got this. And simply worked with him on that level.
The Okanagan valley spilled below us in a lush jumble of orchards and
blue river and rolling green hills. In
the distance stood the dramatic view of the snow topped Cascades. There was something almost unreal about it
all. As if an old painting or a picture book
had appeared below us. We followed it
all the up until appeared in the
distance. As we drew closer, we began to
prepare. My dad handled the radios,
letting the Canadian border office know we would be landing soon. I did a last minute check of the altitude of
the lake, what my instruments read and tightening my seat belt. Turbulence began to hammer at the fuselage
and the wings rocked despite my corrections on the controls. Turbulence doesn’t really bother me too much,
but I was starting to get extra attentive about this landing. My knuckles were beginning to show.
As I dropped lower over the lake, I saw very few boats, but there were a
lot of whitecaps. Not a good sign. One more check of the weather confirmed that
twenty knot gusts were ripping sporadically across the surface. We had no choice but to just do this. I could see his hands creeping toward the
yoke (that’s what we call the steering wheel in planes). I looked at him, “I got it, it’ll be ok.” Thing is, he was by far the more experienced
pilot. But I didn’t feel like this was
beyond me.
I lined up near the small border patrol hut on the shore and pointed us
into the wind. When we hit, a whitecap
smacked up right back into the air. Hard. My main concern was not
stalling at this point (accidentally pulling the nose up so high that air stops
flowing over the wings and the plane simply noses in and crashes, it’s not
good). I gave it some power and eased
the nose down slightly as we pancaked in again. This time we stuck. We skidded
off one whitecap onto the top of another, then slid down into a trench, bobbing
furiously. The wind was trying to spin
the wings around so I cut the power and without speaking, we undid our belts
and opened the doors so they could act as sails. We drifted this way in a heavy fist of wind
all the way to shore. We had made it to Canada.
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