Becalmed

One of them asked me if I had seen my whole life pass in review during those last few moments. The answer is, No. I saw those sturdy trees and did my duty: aimed the airplane between them, so they’d peel the wings off her back, slowly, slowly, giving a smooth deceleration.

Back in the Air Force—it’s hard to believe I got my wings a quarter of a century ago—they told us to hit the trees just so, and with another refinement: don’t get hung up in the rafters. Many a fine broth of a lad has put his broken machine into the treetops, coming to rest safely but a matter of thirty or forty feet in the air. Whereupon he has loosened his seatbelt in the jubilation of surviving the crash, only to fall, straight down, and break his neck. Hit the trees, they told me so long ago, about ten feet above the deck. My wife, Carroll, visited the crash site and reported that the two trees were notched nicely, ten feet above the ground. So far so good.