On Extended Wings

Another Diane Ackerman book made its way into my life yesterday. A friend, who was cleaning house and wanted to get rid of a load of books, handed me a copy of "On Extended Wings," a twenty-year-old description of the author's experiences in learning to fly. My friend thought I might be interested because of my interest in airplanes. She had no idea that my passion for Diane Ackerman far exceeds my passion for flight. At the moment I'm more than a dozen chapters into the book, and I had to set it aside just now to think about being fully alive, as that woman certainly is. I envy her sensitivity to the sensory world. She notices things, and feels the impact of them on her soul. Most importantly to me, she is able to express all those feelings in her writing, whether she is describing a fledgling bird's first attempts to leave the nest or the physics of an exploding nova many light years away. Her passionate relationship with life and all its contents reminds me how narrow and dry my own world seems sometimes. Her intense curiosity leads her to explore everything she encounters, with a razor-sharp intellect that peers deeply into the meaning of everything. And to her, everything has meaning. Learning to fly was not easy for her, not because she couldn't learn the skills and the mind-set required, but because in the environment of a small airplane freed from its natural resting place on the ground, control is everything. A moment's inattention or confusion about what to do to keep the aircraft where it is in the sky can result in sudden disaster. Flying a small plane is not difficult, no more than driving a car. The difference is that one cannot simply pull over to the side of the road and think about the process. An airplane has brakes, but they are only useful when taxiing slowly on the ground, not when flying at eighty miles an hour five hundred feet above the earth. It's easy and common for new fliers to get rattled to the point of freezing at the controls, to be suddenly unable to function or to think of what they are doing. At one point in the book, Ackerman has just taken her instructor aside after a lesson and explained to him how she responds to his military-style teaching. To him, sharp criticism and angry-sounding instructions get the attention of students, sharpening their instincts and making them remember. To her, his style simply cowed her, beating her down and convincing her that she was incompetent to learn what had to be learned. He, of course, was shocked to hear that his teaching style had the opposite effect to what he had come to expect. Having gone through flight training myself, I could fully sympathize with her upset. Learning to fly takes a lot of different habits than what we are accustomed to. The only way to learn them is to do them--correctly and incorrectly--many times. The problem is that "incorrect" at a crucial moment can cause death. That's a little further up the significance scale from a dented fender. But of

Diane Ackerman is one of those Renaissance women who isn't afraid to try anything. Actually, she would probably say she *is* afraid (see page 7, "I don't feel particularly daring....."), but doesn't let that get in the way of her passion for learning. Luckily for us, she has a craving to document her many adventures with the natural world. This book is one of those documents. As a student pilot, I loved reading this book. I could sympathize with her frustration at not "getting it" when she would learn a new concept, and I laughed many times at the typical flight instructor gems: "If you want to land, land; if you don't want to land, don't land; but don't do both at once." At the very least, I realized how lucky I was to have two incredibly competent and supportive flight instructors, compared to the monster she started out with. Ackerman has an incredible way with words, sometimes capturing the mood and feeling so perfectly that you find yourself nodding your head in silent agreement, or shaking it in amazement at her uncanny ability to read your mind. She is a poet with a keen mind for science, and isn't afraid to weave beauty with physics into her sentences. Indeed, the two are inseparable in her eyes. The reason I withheld one star in my review is because sometimes Ackerman gets carried away with her literary prowess by trying to shoe-horn very technical terms into a "pretty" wrapping. It seems forced at times. Perhaps this is because some concepts just don't lend themselves well to frilly speach. Perhaps this is because this is one of Ackerman's earlier works and her skills weren't as honed. Or perhaps I just didn't "get it" and another reader might. Luckily, these awkward moments were few and far between and were easily forgiven. All in all, I highly recommend this book. If you are a student pilot, a Renaissance woman, or just a poet with a love of science, Ackerman's "On Extended Wings" is a lovely way to meet another like-minded soul.

When someone of Diane Ackerman's ability writes about learning to fly, the result is poetic and inspiring. Her life-long love of flight and her journey to take herself into that world is one that can be appreciated by anyone. If you're a flight instructor or student yourself, you will appreciate it even more.

I take this book whereever I go. It is a superb comment on life,placed in that wonderful aviation world. There is nothing that comes close to reading and learning from this book.