An old-school reader, annually I must winnow my collected ink-on-paper titles to make shelf room for Christmas newcomers. As they have for decades, the works of Richard Bach survive every purge.
Like many others, I met Richard through the pages of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a Christmas present from my parents in 1972. He articulated a kindred outlook on life I was then struggling to define. We met again in his other works and in subsequent titles that now wait on my shelf for our next reunion.
It’s been awhile since Richard and I met on new pages, so I sought out his digital being. He’s sharing his philosophy and love of flight through a blog born this December. It’s a home “for short little bits of ideas, funny things that happen, a place to show the pasts and futures of what I care about, dear reader, if you should happen to be interested.”
As aviation—especially GA, the portal for flight’s newcomers—seeks its way in the 21st century, it should be of interest to all concerned about the future. The critical message is the theme that unites all of Bach’s aeronautical prose, that aviation’s sustaining joy and rewards are found in the adventure of simple flight.
Isn’t that what first drew us into the sky? For Richard, the simple act of looking up at a passing airplane led him skyward in the mid-1950s. And the joy of simple stick & rudder flight sustains him still, a point well made in A Different Family. Its final paragraph offers aviators this poignant observation:
“We come together, we meet because we share common interests, common values, we laugh at common joys, cringe at common dangers.
“Not blood, that runs this deep.
“Only child, last survivor, orphan, black-sheep outcast from your clan?
“You want to find your family, first you find your love.”
As we seek our way forward, perhaps the successful solution is to remember when we were newcomers enthralled with the sky. Instead of the technology and procedures that now define the maturity of our flying lives we should focus on the compelling and attractive challenges and rewards of simple flight. — Scott Spangler