Footprints in the wilderness

Flight Journal, Jun 1998 by Davisson, Budd

For many of us, the concept of wilderness" is largely an intellectual one that is rooted in cinematic images. Real-world wilderness experience is generally lack. For that reason, we can't fully appreciate the world of the bush pilot.

Wilderness is not camping out. It is not a hike into the mountains. To be in the wilderness means being alone. It means going where nature has yet to be tamed by civilization's artificial security systems. It means putting your life into no one's hands but your own. The serious bush pilot who calls the wilderness home is one of the more unique species on the planet A bush pilot doesn't have to do what he does. There are lots of safe, predictable flying jobs that don't require him to risk his life on a daily basis. But that would take the pilot away from the wilderness that often becomes as much a part of his character as the ability to judge wind and slopes. The true bush pilot probably couldn't exist without the challenge to his skills that's an inherent part of flying in a wilderness context

Patches of wilderness exist the world over, but it is the huge, mostly empty mantle of green and white that drapes the northern edge of our continent that has attracted pilots almost from the day airplanes were born. Folklore has it the first airplane project in the north was completed (and barely flown) on July 4, 1913 in the Alaska Territory. In the years since, Alaska has been the flame that has drawn so many mechanical moths, that the percentage of the state's population who fly is grossly out of proportion to the rest of the nation. Aviation is part of the state's fabric of existence. As early as 1939, Alaska's fledgling territorial airlines were carrying twenty-three times as many passengers and a thousand times as much freight per capita as their counterparts in the lower 48. This wasn't planned. It happened because of all the places in the world where the airplane could have a major, immediate impact, Alaska was it.

An expanse 20 percent the size of the entire continental U.S., Alaska can be a tough land, in every sense of the word. To live and survive in it demands an uncommon ability to rise to the challenge, while at the same time recognizing when the challenge is so great that the only logical way to survive is to retreat.

In 1920, it took the U.S. Army's Black Wolf Squadron nearly six brutal weeks to fly four de Havilland D.H.4s under the command of Capt. St. Claire Streett to the mostly log-cabin community of Fairbanks, Alaska. During WW II, Maj. Gen. Streett would command the Pacific Theater's 13th Air Force, but his flightpath on the Alaska trip was marked by scattered and broken airplane parts. Less than two years later, in 1923, an ex-barnstormer-cum high school teacher, Ben Eielson, was routinely braving the outlandish conditions of Alaska in a WW I surplus Curtiss JN-4D Jenny. He and his thoroughly unreliable flying machine became a lifeline to parts of the territory virtually impossible to reach in a reasonable period of time by any other method. Eielson is considered the original aviation pioneer in a state populated with pioneers.

We often think of our mail pilots pounding their way across the U.S. in their Jennys as brave pioneers. And they were. But few of us think of those who pioneered the same activities in Alaska. Eielson was the first airmail pilot, and he constantly battled conditions that were nearly impossible for the still-primitive form in which aviation then existed. Still, Eielson persevered. The hardships associated with keeping a wheezing 90hp OX-5 running in 30 to 50 degrees below zero temperatures are unimaginable. Natural-rubber tires crystallized. Oil solidified. Man suffered horribly. Simply breathing in the open cockpits invited frostbitten lungs. A few minutes of flight without goggles frosted the eyeballs. An emergency landing actually was a dire emergency, and it has been said the pioneering bush pilots spent more time "walking out" than they did flying. Hundreds lost their lives.

In the lower 48, when a pilot couldn't finish his mail run, he'd land next to a road, they'd truck the mail to a train, and ot would be on its way. The pilot would wait out the weather while warming himself ina nearby farmhouse; 1920s Alaska, however, was pure wilderness. There were no roads. Few trains. No farmhouses. There was nothing but the towweing topgraphy and wild, unpredictable weather that are still Alaska' trademarks. The topgraphy and the weather haven't changes. In their shadow, the technology, no matter how modern, is insignificant by comparsion.

In Alsaska, the airplane was, and is, a neccessry part of life. Even today, the state has fewer roads per square mile than any other state. It has the highest mountains. The most glaciers. The most uninhabited as a way of simply moving the mail. It was for living life beyond the limits of the few cities. A one-hour flight in Eielson's Jenny eliminated

In Alaska, the airplane was, and is, a neccssary part of life. Even today, the state has fewer roads per square mile than any other state. It has the highest mountains. The most glaciers. The most unihabited areas. In Alaska, the airplane ws never viewed as a way of simply moving the mail. It was for living lefe beyond the limits of the few cities. A one-hour flight in Eielson's Jenny eliminated days of ardouus travel by dogsled. That, too, has cahnged little.