The Cannibal Queen by Stephen Coonts

Author:Stephen Coonts
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2010-07-20T16:00:00+00:00

18

THE FIRST 60 OR SO MILES WEST OF THE TOWN OF PARKERSBURG on the Ohio River the country looks like a continuation of West Virginia with heavily wooded hills that run in random directions. Then 60 nautical miles west of the river the hills end abruptly. So do the trees. From this point westward as far as the eye can see in this haze every square yard of the land below is devoted to growing crops. Strangely, the land is not set off in the neat north-south, east-west sections of the Midwest and plains. Here the boundary fences seem to run northeast-southwest, northwest-southeast. Odd.

Today the Cannibal Queen carries me westward toward Colorado. There she will receive a careful look from Steve Hall, the royal mechanic, before she and I go on to the West Coast. That’s the plan, anyway.

And today the sky is clear, the wind out of the southeast, a nice quartering tailwind. Visibility is about twenty miles and I am flying at 4,500 feet to enjoy it. I wish I knew what I did to deserve flying conditions like this so I could do it more often.

I am still glowing over the thirty-one rides I gave this past week in West Virginia. Cousins, friends, people I never saw before, I took everyone who wanted to go in the time I had available. Several of the strangers wanted to pay for their rides but I refused. The look of wonder on their faces when they got out of the plane and thanked me was payment enough.

Symbols of flight abound in contemporary society. They are everywhere, ubiquitous.

Yet humans used symbols of flight long before powered flight became a reality. Throughout history people dreamed of flight, drew pictures of it and speculated about it. They left us myths of Icarus and Daedalus, drawings by Da Vinci, paintings of the blessed ones—the angels—with wings upon their backs. The Greek gods flitted around Mount Olympus. Jesus ascended into heaven in a white cloud. Mohammed rode up mounted upon a white stallion. Notice where heaven always was—up. Up there where man could not go, up where only birds and gods, prophets and angels are allowed.

When I was a boy I had recurring dreams of flight in which I could raise myself off the ground and soar because I willed it. People whose only experience with aviation is riding in a window seat on an airliner tell me they have had similar dreams. I suspect many people have.

Flight has a subconscious, almost instinctive attraction for members of our species. To break the bonds of gravity that tie us to the earth and soar freely is an image that stirs us in unexpected, profound ways.

I have yet to carry a passenger in the Cannibal Queen who is unmoved by the experience. To see the ground dropping gently away as the yellow wings carry you sedately upward and the wind swirls against your face, to fly above the countryside at an altitude that allows everything below to

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