The Caravan on the Apron

The way home runs back through the west, and the west has one of my weaknesses: a small airfield, concrete apron to the steppe, one white Cessna Caravan parked in the enormous light, a tower staffed by a man with tea and no urgency whatsoever.

He let me walk out, as such men always have. Regular readers know the ritual by now: novelist crosses apron, admires small aircraft, considers the other life in which she flies, returns to her car. The Caravan does the mail and the miners' rotation, the tower man said. Twice a week the sky here has a schedule.

I patted the Niva when I got back to it, out of loyalty. But the pull is real and on the record, again. One day this blog will report from a cockpit. Not yet. The road west is long and mine.