I’m reading a biographical account of one of the greatest Alaskan Bush pilots, Don Sheldon, Wager With The Wind. It was written by James Griener and published the year we married. 1974. A mighty good year if my aging memory serves me correct.
Throughout the book I’ve made notes and markings to remember what it is like in my modern memory of Alaska as compared to what it was back in the years of my birth and through the ’60s.
Don Sheldon made his home in Talketna, and flew many missions, deliveries, pickups and dropoffs throughout the state. He pioneered glacier landings primarily around Denali (Mt McKinley) and held records for some of the highest landings of a normal style airplane. On the shoulders of glaciers and shelves of land, he successfully learned how to land high in the mountains.
I just finished another section of the book with another new place I would love to visit were I of a younger body. Farewell Mountain. Located westardly Denali, the Great One, it is a place where Don “…soberly describes as “the home of the winds.“” Nestled west of Denali, alongside the Kuskokwim River’s South Fork, the Jet Stream winds dip and moves between the sky and ground, creating forces that can wreck havoc of air and ground at the same time.
On one mission, Don noticed the rapidly approaching storm system, and immediately took off down-glacier just as the wind overtook him. He bubbled with the wind flow for about a mile before clearing the surface, and turned into the wind. He says the high winds rocketed him up to 14,000 feet in altitude.
Imagine with me what the Jet Stream produces. I’ve been at altitude in many a commercial plane and the pilot announces the speed of the Jet Stream that speeds up and radically slows down our flight time – it depends on which way you’re travelling.
Fly with it, and you go fast!
Fly against it, and it seems like you creep to your destination.
Back to Don. As he flew into the wind, he planned on flying through Kahiltna Pass. He was not making forward progress. His engine was redlined, or, in other words, it was working the hardest at a level in which you would damage your engine. What was the result? Though faced the direction he wanted to go, flying into the wind, he was actually flying backward!
No forward motion, and the wind was pushing him further from his destination.
What do you do?
This was my thought this morning about a lot of things happening in life. How do we make forward progress? It’s easy.
Without changing the destination,
you change directions.
I’m taking this to heart.
Changing directions do not mean changing your destination. It simply means to pick a different way to get to the same place you are aiming for.
Go With The Flow: Changing directions do not mean changing your destination. It simply means to pick a different way to get to the same place you are aiming for. Share on XSometimes that means backing down from a dispute, consider the opinions of others, be watchful of the times that will block your mortion, and choose the easiest way to continue moving.
Isaiah 30:18-21 NKJV
Therefore the LORD will wait,
that He may be gracious to you;
And therefore He will be exalted,
that He may have mercy on you.
For the LORD is a God of justice;
Blessed are all those who wait for Him.
For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem;
You shall weep no more.
He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry;
When He hears it, He will answer you.
And though the Lord gives you
The bread of adversity and the water of affliction,
Yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore,
But your eyes shall see your teachers.
Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying,
“This is the way, walk in it,”
Whenever you turn to the right hand
Or whenever you turn to the left.