Humbled Again, by Real Flyers

On the seventeenth of August, mid-afternoon, I was alone in the bigger of our two little float-planes, eastbound to pick up yet another in this season’s onslaught of Norwegian canoe parties. This time it was a married couple, who had called for a pickup about six days earlier than originally booked. They had finished their planned route and did not want to proceed down the Thelon River any farther, nor did they fancy staying in one place for a week. They called me on the satellite phone and laughed and said “We’ve had a great six weeks. We are ready for some chicken wings and cold beer. Come get us if you can.”

I could. I did. And on that one-point-two hour flight I had another of the moments that come along every now and then in aviation, to keep us airborne humans humble.

This time it was a pair of golden eagles. Sometimes it’s a swallow, total gross weight around 25 grams, just under a tenth of an ounce, swooping into a one-inch-diameter nest-box opening in the teeth of a twenty-knot wind, and nailing that precision approach and touchdown every time. Sometimes it’s an Arctic tern, shrugging its feathered shoulders through a morning mist above the shallows out front, only to tuck and stoop and pull up in a near-hammerhead stall with a meal in its beak.

Or the ospreys of the Hoarfrost River, about whom I keep writing here. Two young this year, since you asked, now beginning to jump up in the nest and spread their wings, flapping in place. Building up muscle, I guess. Getting ready for the big day, a week or two from now, when they will rise from the nest, flap almost nonchalantly, and fly. Just like that! And then, after a few more weeks — long after the two parents have up and gone and left the youngsters completely alone — those two fledglings will disappear south, wending their way to wintering spots a thousand miles and more from here, somehow knowing where to go, somehow finding something to eat along the way. This feat of aviation, navigation, nutrition, and inspiration all from a bird that in early July was still just a warm lump inside an eggshell.

I digress. The eagles. I was droning along at 3500 feet above sea level, about 2200 feet above the tundra. 700 meters, for you more enlightened types. Artillery Lake shining blue ahead, a broad long swath. From the cockpit, movement caught my eye at 11 o’clock high. Two huge soaring birds and the glint on their golden plumage unmistakable. I was passing by them at a distance of under a hundred yards.

The two of them surely saw and heard my noisy stinky contraption, but they remained completely unflappable, if you’ll pardon the pun. Wide wings outstretched, floating. Circling up, riding the convection of a summer day. Up close, up high, they were about as beautiful a thing as I can imagine ever seeing.

I could almost hear them, as I have imagined hearing other birds over the years. “What the hell is that thing?”

Yeah, well, it’s the best we can do. It’s flying, but not really. Not like the real flyers of this world.