MOTHER HEN

Soaring is a sport, and in any sport if you’re not aggressive you’re apt to lose. That’s okay. It’s only a sport after all, and risking your health for something so trivial as a mere win is just plain silly.A young pilot new to mountain soaring was up one day longer than expected while someone scheduled to rent that ship waited, but the kid was nowhere in sight. I’d already said, “Don’t worry, he’ll be down soon,” but having developed a mother hen kind of intuition about such things, I began to wonder myself exactly where that might occur.From the flight line we could easily see anywhere he should be, and now I was searching with binoculars where he shouldn’t. I happened to be focused (mother hen) on exactly that spot when he rose from behind a small hill beyond glide range of the field. In years of soaring that area every day, I had purposely never been low anywhere near there! If I'd known that’s where he was I’d have been horrified, but he was still aloft and now climbing, so all would be well and I began preparing a sermon for when he landed.Then back above the field, he loitered as if not intending to land. That seemed more peculiar than the trouble he’d already gotten into and out of, and the mother hen thing wouldn’t go away even with him sitting up there in plain sight. Finally, after far too long he came around and made the usual fine landing.Now we saw why he’d been so reluctant to come down. There was a gaping hole in the leading edge of one wing where it struck a tree on the far side of that hill.The poor fellow was mortified of course, despite relief at being safely on the ground. Everyone had plenty to say, and he heard it all in the right spirit with teary apologies, vowing to pay for repairs and all the rest. But that would require money of course and, mercifully, he was late for work.When he had gone, I parried the inevitable grumbling with hints of appreciation for some very respectable flying after he got himself in trouble. That sentiment fell on hardened ears. Passing toughest judgment was the pilot most experienced of all those present – whom decades earlier had done this very thing himself only worse, somehow hobbling back with a wingtip and one whole aileron jettisoned in the woods! His outrage may seem unfair, considering the damage his own blunder had caused and how much luckier he’d been in flying a crippled bird home. But being indeed the one who’d done so, it was he who knew whereof he spoke.Point worth belaboring. A dear friend and former student once boasted of diving down a slope, and when he pulled away feeling his tail nick a high branch... I grabbed his shoulder, spun him around and briskly kicked his butt, growling, “Don't ever tell that to anyone else — and when you do, tell 'em you shoulda been killed!” Yes it may be possible to withstand losing part of a wing, but any aircraft with its tail feathers removed will nose immediately straight down, and if a tree was what removed them the extra weight of a parachute will only make you hit harder.(It’s true, I’ve already confessed touching a treetop in flight myself, but that was intentional, an altogether different kind of stupid.)