Clayton Fisher's Greatest Adventures
"Part Six - Time On My Hands"
by Clayton Fisher

October is usually a great month for flying in Oklahoma. The air is cool, mostly dry, winds mostly tolerable. Time to dust off the lexan doors and get um back on my Chinook. Most mornings are cold (35F) and the early morning sun sure feels good in my little flying greenhouse. The afternoon return trips, however, are sometimes a hot sweaty torture. I have discovered tho, that the right side door can be removed, turned big end to the back and slipped in beside the right rear panel. Flown thusly in the warm afternoons, it makes for better picture taking out the open door, as well as letting natures air conditioning in around you. I can discern no difference in flight characteristics with the one-door off. I tried flying once with the front doors on and the left rear door off and realized quickly that was a big no-no. I could smell exhaust coming in the back door from the planes slip pocket.

Take note tho, that ASAP recommends that a Chinook be flown either with all the doors on or all the doors off. But I figure if you don’t never do stuff you ain’t sposed to, how you ever gonna learn nothing, huh! Besides what they don’t know won’t hurt um. Right?

The right door practice will leave some scratches on the rear panel, but with 400 hours on her, my Chinook has got a few dings and boo-boos anyway. I’m a function over for kind of guy, so superficial stuff doesn’t bother me much. What works is most important.

I love my hangar. It’s a combination hay shed, firewood storage place, lawn-mower shed and airplane hangar. With 2 parallel 40 foot steel beams that hold the roof up over door posts that are 34 feet apart; and with double rolling doors, it works good. With a dirt floor and used sheet iron for siding, it’s ugly and cheap, and so does not attract much attention from passers-by, and that’s good.

Since I am “semi” retired and so don’t have to spend as much time hard scrabbling a living from this old farm anymore, I spend a lot of time sitting in the open doors of my hangar looking out across the hay meadow, down to the creek woods beyond, contemplating the cosmos. My Chinook is behind me, fuelled up and ready to go if I should decide to “join the tumbling mirth” of air currents and fall colors above me. With the price of fuel lately, it’s a bunch cheaper to watch other things fly- try to learn something.

Often, there’s an old marsh hawk that comes hovering past, 3 feet off the ground hunting varmits in the edges and fencerows. He flashes that white parch on the back of his tail as he works his feathers to stay just above a stall in the head wind.

Flocks of turtledoves come flashing past, chasing each other to the best sunflower patches.

A few cool fronts have pushed small flocks of teal and scaup into the area. They hang around local ponds until colder north winds give them reason to move on south. Later bunches of Mallards and Gadwalls and other larger varieties will be seen moving around the country against cold, gray skies. It will be time to check out the 12 gauge for some pond jumping.

Susan and I sleep with the window at the head of our bed open, even in the winter. The moan of the north wind, that plaintful call of great flocks of geese on their way to the guld will soon fill the night air. The sound will trigger a wanderlust that is hard to describe and even harder to contain. The tremendous increase in traffic and the years whittling away at our spirit of adventure have dulled the ache somewhat. Ain’t life funny?

But back to October and the open hangar door.

There are always buzzards, Red Tailed Hawks, and the occasional Bald Eagle that soar the thermals above my hangar, making me jealous. Only in the past few years have there been Eagles passing through this area. They follow the South Canadian River, which flows north of us a few miles, and there is always a Carp in the shallow water to attract a hungry Eagle.

A Great Blue Heron comes gliding over the treetops and with an easy wing over that would make any flying creature proud, drops like a big gray rock into our pond, flaps down – long spindly legs finding just where to land for a little crawdad fishing.

The local crows, I have named “The Gang of Thieves” are always around raising hell with some poor hoot owl down on the creek, or “stealing” table scraps that Susan puts out for them. The raucous crows, the whistle of meadow larks, the whisper of the wind thru the tall grass and the pecan trees in the bottom conjures up a deep appreciation of the wildness that is around me and a longing for the way things used to be. God, I wish I could have been here 200 years ago and experienced this country before “progress” changed it all.

We didn’t start the fire.
It was always burning since the worlds been turning.
We didn’t start the fire,
No we didn’t light it,
But we tried to fight it.
From a song by Billy Joel
 

But the very best thing about October in Oklahoma is the annual migration of natures shorenuff ultralights – Monarch butterflies. On some days hundreds can be seen moving southwest on gentle breezes. They fly from 6 inches off the ground to as high as one can virtually see them. And I have seen the little buggers as high as 1000 feet AGL while flying my Chinook. They travel between southern Canada and the Northern US to their wintering grounds around Angangueo, Mexico, southwest of Mexico City. I think our farm must be smack dab in the middle of their flyway, and I’ll tell ya, I’m plum tickled to death about it. They stop in our fencerows and hay meadows to grab a quick bite (suck) and then move along, circling – back tracking – apparently having a good old time. In years past the tall Maximillian Sunflower has been their energy drink of choice, but this year they were chowing down on a small insignificant native flower – Blue Sage (Salvia Azurea) in the meadows. I took a picture or two just for the heck of it.

Maybe soon, the friendly countries to the North and South will honor our Sport Pilot rules and I’ll be able to fly up and down this whole magnificent continent. Maybe someday I’ll load ole Chinook down with flour tortillias and hot sauce, brush up on my Espanol and boogie South with the butterflies – or maybe I’ll decide not to. But to be able to fly when I want, where I want, consistent with flight rules, NOTAM”s, and of course – weather; reach out the open doors of my bird and feel the sky flowing past – priceless!

As I am finishing this story on Thanksgiving morning, I’ve been thinking about the pristine world of 200 years ago and my imaginary place in it. I’m realizing there would have been no flying, indeed no airplanes, no 40 foot steel beams, used sheet iron or rolling doors – no electricity, indeed no power tools, shops or hangars. There would have been ONLY flour tortillias and hot sauce, with maybe some hard tack and buffalo jerky for variety; eaten in an unending ocean of grass after a monotonous day. I probably would have died of appendicitis at the age of 6. Had I survived illness, I might have been burnt alive in a prairie fire, trampled by stampeding buffalo, kilt by raiding Comanche’s, or suffered a broken neck when my horse stumbles and falls after stepping in a prairie dog hole whilst running from all that stuff chasing me.

And would I have had any appreciation for the wilderness around me, considering how busy I’d be just trying to survive? One wonders.

So I guess I’ll put up with the roar of the interstate and the insanity of modern life. I’ve got a Super Wal-Mart a few miles up the road to keep me in trinkets and gizmos and a red dirt farm to keep me close to nature. I’ve got a dynamite little wife who doesn’t hold my eccentricities against me, three great kids who are out doing their own thing and – ain’t costin’ me not money! I’ve got a great running flying machine I can buss around the country in – because at 2500 feet everything comes into perspective.
 

The world’s alright; serene I sit,
And cease to puzzle over it.
There’s much that’s mighty strange, no doubt;
But nature knows what she’s about;
And in a million years or so,
We’ll know more than today we know.
Old evolution’s underway –
What-ho! The world’s alright I say.

From a poem by Robert Service


 

Clayton Fisher Story 7...