TOO LATE TO RUSH - TOO SOON TO QUIT

Our tow pilot du jour was summering in a camper on the airport with his new bride.  (It really amounted to an extended honeymoon, paid, with free flying to boot, so you can't blame him for agreeing to that.) Though the happy couple ‘slept’ only a hundred yards from the flight line, he was invariably late for work.One brisk morning he failed to sufficiently warm the engine before first launch and when it sputtered he rocked us off.  Barely a hundred feet up, directly over power wires with the entire airport behind us and an orchard dead ahead.  Our chariot in this race against gravity weighed a thousand pounds empty plus an XXL student up front, and the 66-foot wingspan generated almost no profile drag – all disadvantages for maneuvering and getting stopped in a tight spot.The designated abort field (at that time) was rough and uneven with plenty of desert brush and a no-joke side slope to demand your attention.  According to legend at least one glider had actually landed there a generation ago, presumably a high wing 2-33. I'd walked that field many times and knew the bigger bushes had grown head high, each one stiff enough to grab a light plane and not let go.  Any landing there NOW would be some kind of wreck at best.We had a couple of seconds before committing to (one thousand one, one thousand two)...  something.I really wanted to get back on the runway, but what about the holy 200-foot rule?  No seriously, if we go in there the bird's a goner, so why not try to haul her back around?  Pinned by the dilemma's horns, there was no time to deliberate.  (One thousand two and a half...)The ego let go and the id took command.  I became an observer.  My voice narrated what my hands and feet did, but I watched with as much fascination as XXL up front. “I got it,” my voice said. After that I guess I kept talking, but it was only a minor distraction and I was too busy watching to listen. There was an IMMEDIATE steep diving turn, back over those wires. Bottoming out, we were off to one side of the airport still in a wide shallow bank. A quarter mile of rural outbuildings and Joshua trees led diagonally to the airport fence where a row of hangars stood between us and the runway. Pushing down into the top of ground effect, we leveled straight at the highest obstacle, graaadually relaxed forward pressure to hold even height above ground as speed bled off – eyes on the hazard, not the panel. Skimming slow over it, we kept maybe five feet of pull-up in reserve, then pressed forward smooothly to maintain speed in a very flat coordinated turn timed to line up, level again and touch down midfield. It was a one-minute flight, extra spicy yet awfully sweet.Back at the launch line pointing the opposite direction, I hopped out quick to face XXL and reassure him somehow.  He was already celebrating.  “You never took a breath!” he laughed, “I thought we were toast, and you were… like reading a book.”"Easy reading, it was all pictures."We had to wait for the towplane to come around and land so I could scream, "What the ---?" Meanwhile XXL and I grinned at each other like two fools while the visual slow-mo burned into both our brains forever. But isn’t there something unsatisfying about this? We growl at the tow pilot a while and then let him try it again? The engine’s warm, now.Yes, but the abort field is still a crash waiting to happen. So...That's how I came to spend every full moon night that summer, out there hacking brush in the dark, raking it into piles out of the way and clearing a seven hundred foot runout so when somebody does eventually land there they'll have at least a chance!That happened several years ago, and since then, every single minute, the brush has been growing back up... and UP. I did my bit last time, who's turn is it now?