A VOCAL PLUS MEDIA CHALLENGE
Life’s Flight
As life is lost meaning is found
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A bird. A creature that could not have foreseen its own demise from the spin of my propeller. Which then promptly stopped.
That was all it took to bring my vintage Cessna 180 Taildragger to the ground. Quite violently, I might add. The impact with the live bird had a devasting effect on the cables and wiring of the old bird leaving no real control, only frantic attempts at it.
I had clipped the leading edge of the dune as I attempted to make a landing that wouldn’t flip the plane. Landing a taildragger downhill on a dune would certainly result in a flip as soon as the forward wheels touched. Likewise, with no thrust, I was already a metal rock in the sky so there would be no attempts at an uphill which, incidentally, would be insane on the best of days. No, it was “try to run the ridge and at least slow down the momentum” or nothing. I couldn’t guide the rock. I couldn’t make the angle. I never liked trigonometry.
As the sun worked to find its intensity for the day I couldn’t help but laugh. I wished that my writer friends could come by and see that plane wrecks rarely result in cute little homes made from a fuselage, rather, the planes disintegrate.
The fact that the old bird disintegrated most likely saved my life as it threw me clear and down the dune. Unfortunately, it looked as if it was all for naught. I could not climb to the top of the dune where most of the wreckage was, my left leg was broken near the ankle and my right shoulder screamed every time I attempted to use the arm. I was able to pull myself to a lone seat lying on its side near me. Two bottles of water had miraculously survived in the back pouch. I rationed them, taking large gulps to let the life-sustaining hydration reach deep to my insides. Then the bottled water ran out. That was two days ago.
I moved the seat throughout each day to shield myself from the sun with as much protection as it would allow. The nights have been bitter cold as well though I don’t seem to feel it as much anymore. And the stars, the beautiful eternal dance of pinpoints in the dark sky. I couldn’t help but notice that the stars are still beautiful. When you’re dying I mean, did you know? Life isn’t ending, just your part in it. For now.
Now, with two days of no water drying my very bones whilst I still live to feel it, I simply have not the strength to move the seat again. The sun is beginning its lazy stroll through the sky. I am certain it is eyeing me with keen interest now that I lay exposed. This is not boding well.
“They” say the heat of the desert sun will drive the sanity from one’s mind. It’s more of an urge really, than a drive. An urge to remember every person, every moment both happy and sad. Perhaps “they” refer to the constant effort to concentrate, to embrace the memories hoping that they alone can save you.
Perhaps.
Though I knew death was imminent I found peace in its slow advance. I allowed myself to become lost in the beauty of life, both the present and the past. I had found life in my death. As life’s loving grasp became a caress, then a breath, I understood that my time here was done, my purpose served, a peace was allowed.
And die I did. At that time, in that place, lost to all eyes save my own.
As the last motes of life’s essence evaporated from me that day I realized that I had fulfilled a need, a need not of mine, not of others, but of life itself. Engulfed in the desert’s parched silence, I was nothing but another grain of sand in the wind.