By Mike Davenport, EAA 89102
I recently got around to reading for the first time a book I purchased some 20 years ago. At the time I recall thinking, I’ll read this later when I have more time. A good friend often tells me not to rush into things, and in this case, I didn’t.
The book was written by Beryl Markham, originally printed in 1942 and was published again in 1994 as The Illustrated West With the Night. It is the highly condensed story of the life of a very interesting woman and an accomplished pilot. But, enough of the book report — you’ll just have to read it for yourself.
One chapter, though, clearly spoke to me. In it she described her relationship with maps. Yes, maps. Do you remember them? Large pieces of colored paper, too big to unfold in the cockpit but just perfect when spread out on the dining room table or the motel room bed. No longer used as much now as they have been largely replaced by the tiny little screen of a GPS. Don’t get me wrong, I love my GPS, but its content is such a passing thing; its history is gone in an instant, never to be seen again. Whereas with maps, they can be kept indefinitely, used over and over again, held together with Scotch tape. Written on again and again but only if you are clever enough to use a soft pencil so that your notes or route can be erased and redrawn. Maps get old, but while the frequencies on them may change, the mountains and rivers always stay in the same place.
Just to be clear, I like all maps, be they weather maps, road maps, or aeronautical charts. Here I will quote Beryl, “No map I have ever flown with has ever been lost or thrown away.” While her trunk contained the maps of trips through Africa and England and across the Atlantic and on to a Cape Breton bog, mine are in two old briefcases and are somewhat more local in nature: Vancouver through Chicago to Toronto in ’83, the trip to Oshkosh in ’86, Langley via Prince George and Fort Liard to Fort Simpson in ’95, and maps for Washington and Oregon for trips taken so often that the maps could be left at home. But then who would do that to such a good friend? There are even maps of a trip to Haiti, never taken but carefully planned — just in case.
Maps are a perfect source of remembrances of trips taken, both the good and the less than good. The fog, thunderstorms, and wind. Details come to mind about trips that included problems with oil coolers and magnetos, carb icing, and even a blown cylinder. And then there was the never-to-be-forgotten forced landing. And lest you are wondering who gave this clown a pilot’s license, there were also the trips that showed me the incredible vistas of the Rocky Mountains on a flight from Calgary to Delta Airpark in perfect severe clear weather, the beauty of Vancouver Island, the Oregon coast, the flight over active volcano Mount St. Helens, complete with the smell of sulfur. Viewpoints by the way that are not available to a ground-bound freeway flyer.
I am 75 now, and who knows how much longer I’ll be able to fly, but with those old maps I’ll always have an accurate source for my memories.