“… the ideal companion is rare, and in default of him it is better to make a long journey alone. One’s company in a strange world.”
— Peter Fleming, “One’s Company”
“Even if I should, by some awful chance, find a hair upon my bread and honey – at any rate it is my own hair.”
— Katherine Mansfield, from her “Journal”.
A happy birthday to the famed aviator and author, Ernest Gann. Gann was born in Lincoln, NE on this date in 1910. He learned to fly in the early 1930’s and by the end of that decade was flying DC-2’s for American Airlines. In 1942, like many American pilots, Gann was absorbed into the Air Transport Command to assist in the war effort.
The Douglas DC-2
Gann would turn his adventures of flying into a second career as an author. He wrote over 26 novels, of which 21 would become best sellers. He also wrote the screenplays, adapting 11 of his novels for both film and television. When I first moved to Alaska, I came across my favorite of Gann’s books: Fate is the Hunter, and I gobbled up any of his books that I could find. Some of his other literary works include: Island in the Sky, The High and the Mighty, Soldier of Fortune,and The Antagonists.
Flying magazine lists Gann #34 on their list of 51 Heroes of Aviation. Ernest Gann died in 1991.
“He knew better than anyone the darkness that hides behind the costume of a carefully manicured lawn.”
—John Cheeve
“If one has cut, split, hauled, and piled his own good oak, and let his mind work the while, he will remember much about where the heat comes from, and with a wealth of detail denied to those who spend the weekend in town astride a radiator.”
— Aldo Leopold
Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation
Some rare film footage taken in 1927 of Aldo Leopold, father of American Conservation and the author of “A Sand County Almanac”, was recently found. Leopold, was on a trout fly-fishing trip to the Lily River in Wisconsin, with his brother Carl, friend Thomas Coleman, and sons Starker and Luna.
“The Lily chooses her birds well. In the cool dawn a hundred whitethroats lament in minor chorus that as yet undiscovered tragedy that broke the heart of “Ah – – poor Canada.” An occasional winter wren breaks in upon them with so jovial a whistle that one is led to think perhaps Canada after all has outgrown her secret sorrow. During the days fishing anxious mother grouse cluck to their hidden broods and redwings extol the lush greenness of the little marshes along the Lily’s banks. Not until the last evening light is upon the aspens do the thrushes begin. This also is the hour when fishermen go to sleep. Clear at first the singing cadences, then dimmer with the waning sunset, until at last the windings and unwindings of thrushes song merge with the windings and unwinding of the Lily and the long lines that fall unerringly upon her trouty pools in fishermen’s dreams.”
—from Aldo Leopold’s journal
Excerpt of Leopold’s journal entry comes courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation, which was transcribed by Stephen Laubach. Mr Laubach also made the video available on his youtube channel.
“Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.”
— William Saroyan
“Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges —
“Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!”
Rudyard Kipling from “The Explorer”
“One taxpayer decided to write off the entire cost of his $50,000, multi-year globetrotting extravaganza, which included trips to Italy, France and Greece. And it worked, all because he wrote a book about his travels.
His tax preparer Jerry Lewin, managing director of accounting firm CBIZ MHM, said that because the book was actually published — even if it was by an obscure, low-budget publishing house — and because he made a small profit from it — only 20 books were sold — it counted as a business expense.”
From Yahoo! Finance
Ted Simon and his Triumph Tiger 100
“Regardless of the wonders of technology and communication, our world is the same size as it ever was, and somewhere on its surface colorful, fascinating and unpredictable things are happening, just as they always have. The internet – and I’m on it too – is a wonderful way for some of us to communicate certain kinds of information, but even at its best it can never substitute for physical interaction, and at worst it is an escape from reality that can come periously close to paranoia. Modern technology is a culture that cuts us off from the bigger world surrounding it. As human animals, we need to get out into that world, to feel it, smell it, think like it, to learn how good it is, and to feel free.”
—- Ted Simon
Covelo, 1996
