Richard Bach pens another soaring adventure tale

It first happened around 1970 or so. I was 18 and impressionable and into my life walked (or was it flew?) the words of a man on the wings of a bird. Not a cardinal, the bird of my home state, or a robin, so common in those parts, or even a mallard, which flies overhead each spring and fall. 

The bird that flew into my life and the man, whose carefully crafted sentences were to touch it again and again for 40 years and still counting, were Jonathan Livingston Seagull and his creator Richard Bach. 

Since that day—specific date on the calendar left unremembered back in those days of tie-died t-shirts and bellbottom blue jeans—Bach has flown into my life again and again, each time bringing me new characters to love, new words to entertain, new thoughts to inspire. 

Just when I needed them they found me—his books and his characters. Donald Shimoda in “Illusions,” little Dickie in “Running from Safety,” Budgeron Ferret in “Writer Ferrets: Chasing the Muse,” and more. 

About this time last year, Bach, whose path had crossed mine in real life (IRL, in cyber terms) while he was on Twitter for a short time a couple years ago, embarked on an adventure. As he did, he chronicled it on a website, now inactive. 

The adventure was a cross-country flight with a new love, a character not unlike Jonathan Livingston Seagull. 

This love of Bach’s life had wings like Jonathan, could touch down on the water like the illustrious gull, and had the ability to inspire, just like that prodigy-turned-mentor in Bach’s first bestseller. Her name is Puff. She can swim. She can fly. 

Mortals would call her an amphibious airplane, a SeaRey. Bach would call her a spirit, for that she is. 

Those posts Richard Bach first shared with a family of readers in cyberspace are now available in the pages of a book, one I held in my hands this week, so hot off the press that I can smell the inks used to bring it to life. 

In “Travels with Puff: A Gentle Game of Life and Death,” the author pours onto the pages a love story, an adventure chronicle, an inspirational work sure to warm the hearts of his most avid family of readers and strong enough to draw into that family a new band of members. 

In the early pages, we see a dance of courtship, reminiscent of some ritual of nature’s precious creatures, as Richard and Puff take steps, cautious at first, elegant before long, falling one for the other, earning trust, growing in love. 

Bach’s adventures with Puff begin near the lakes of Florida, Puff’s birthplace and first home, but the author’s dream is to get her to his hangar in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. 

As the pair court, the author and long-time pilot begins to prepare for the journey. He and Puff cavort in the Sunshine State’s skies and splash in its inland waters. Richard does all the practical things seasoned aviators must do before embarking on an adventure across the land, purchasing essential items and getting Puff all gussied up for her big dance. 

Richard Bach, the storyteller, has always been a master at word pictures. Because of this, he could have told Puff’s tale in words alone and it would have been a magnificent work. But, just as Russell Munson’s images of flight brought Jonathan to life in the pages of his book, another wayfarer's lens shows us Puff in all her  sojourner’s finery. 

A fellow aviator, Dan Nickens, a man with a passion not only for flight and for adventure, but also for geology, joins Bach on the journey, capturing in photos what Bach paints in words. The marriage of words and images makes the magnificent even more glorious. 

Nickens’ own  SeaRey, Jennifer, becomes a comfortable friend for Puff on the cross-country double date, and as the photographer sees the country and life through Bach’s eyes, Bach discovers wonders of the earth’s surface visible only through the lens of someone with Nickens’ loves. 

In “Travels with Puff,” the seasoned reader of Bach's work will see reminders of his earlier stories—a bit of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, glimpses of the iconic feather from “Illusions,” reminders of his Ferret Chronicles, images first shared by little Dickie in “Running from Safety,”  and more. 

In this work, Bach also weaves morsels that pay tribute to books that drew him in years ago and warm his heart still today—Kenneth Grahame’s “Wind in the Willows,” L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, the work of Mark Twain. It’s a nice touch.

Nothing on the dust jacket says, "Only read this if an experienced lover of Bach's books," just as nothing warns, "Beware, at the end of this book, you'll be in love, too—with the words on these pages and the freedom of flight." The first warning is unnecessary, as this book is sure to draw new readers. The second warning, I am certain, holds true.

Richard Bach hasn't lost the ability he has to pull us in on the very first page, take us flying toward his dreams and our own, and inspire us to find our passion and pursue it with the same child heart he shows us each time he puts words on paper.

As did Jonathan and Puff, with his latest book, Richard Bach does soar. And, as he did with each of his earlier books, Bach still draws me in, entertains me, and inspires me. 

“Travels with Puff” is published by Nice Tiger and available through major online booksellers. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2013

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Immersed in words

Ever feel as if you were drowning in something, anything, but that whatever was drowning you was a good sort of immersion? 

That’s how it’s been for me recently. On the Friday before Labor Day, after working together at my home all week on the news site we produce, my co-editor and I took a road trip to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Home and Museum in Mansfield, Mo.  Though we didn’t read that day, other than book covers, museum wall plaques and the skimpy menu at a luncheon stop we’ll not include on another trip, or write, it was, nonetheless, a literary adventure. 

Honestly, how can you be surrounded by Little House memorabilia and not feel connected to words, to storytelling? 

The following week, I was off on my own adventure—embarking on a homecoming to the region where I lived for more than four decades, sifting through old family books and papers at my parents’ home, and taking my first biplane ride. I couldn’t wait each day to do my own storytelling, and I whipped up a number of blog posts to capture the joy of the experience.

Back home again, I spent a great deal of time keeping in touch with members of a different family—one I’ve never met, kindred spirits who share an admiration for the author Richard Bach and an appreciation for the magic he makes with words.

Just as Richard and his more-real-than-fictional character Donald Shimoda gathered around a campfire each evening, I’ve enjoyed time spent catching up with Richard’s family of readers who, like I do, miss his blog as he spends time in one of his least favorite places, a hospital,  after an Aug. 31 plane crash.

Instead of manuscripts and blog posts, we’re using our words to comfort each other, talk about Richard’s touch on our lives and the stories we all hold dear. 

But, I can’t be around literary spots, literary sorts, and not feel that tug that’s pulled at me since I was a child—that of a good book, so I’ve read, more than usual. 

A friend led me to the work of Andy Andrews. If you haven’t read “The Noticer” or “The Traveler’s Gift,” I recommend them. They help to remind us of the things that are most important in life, provide a roadmap for our adventure here.

And, because of an online bookseller’s mailing error, I received my copy of “Becoming Clementine” early. It’s the third book in Jennifer Niven’s series about a can-do-anything woman named Velva Jean. If the last name sounds familiar, it’s because Jennifer’s mother, Penelope Niven, wrote a 700-page biography of Carl Sandburg, the most comprehensive look at his life ever. 

Jennifer, though, is not riding on her mother’s coattails. With a nonfiction arctic adventure  story, a biography, a memoir and three novels to date, she’s an author worth paying attention to. She’s got a lot more up her sleeve—and it all promises to be bestselling material.

So, yes, when that book arrived on my step, I took it as a sign that I should stop everything and read it.

I did. It was worth it—more on that in another post.

Last Saturday was Wilder Days in Mansfield, so I was back on the road again for another dose of Laura. I had the privilege that day of meeting William T. Anderson, who has done a great deal of research and written or edited a number of books about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane. 

You guessed it! I am now immersed in Wilder. 

These two women could take everyday happenings across three generations—Laura’s parents, hers and husband Almanzo’s, and Rose’s—and turn them into something enchanting, educational and entertaining. 

Pull a dictionary off the shelf, open it to any page and what will you find? Words—standing alone, waiting to be called upon.

But put them in the hands of a gifted writer, be it Laura or Rose, Richard or Andy, Jennifer or Penny, or William Anderson and what do you get?  Wonder, adventure, inspiration.

Oh, words—the magic they make when woven well. 

Tis no wonder I get immersed in them so. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012  

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Round-trip ticket, front cockpit

I had waited for the day since I can’t remember when – looking longingly each year for decades at rows and rows of multi-colored Stearman biplanes on a sea of grass against a late-summer Midwestern prairie sky,  wishing I knew what it was like to ride in one of the World War II-era planes. 

A year ago, after a morning spent, my brand-new bright yellow Stearman Restorers Association flight line pass stuck to my shirt, walking amidst planes at the 40^th Annual Stearman Fly-in and an afternoon watching an airshow which included a spunky woman wing-walker who could hang, suspended upside down by her feet from a soaring biplane as skillfully as she could sing the “Star-Spangled Banner,” my longing seemed only to intensify. 

That fly-in passed, back in the real world, I stumbled across a photo of the wing-walker, the red and yellow biplane, and the pilot who earned her trust for such daring maneuvers. It was a much better image than the one I’d tried to capture with my point-and-shoot camera. (The daring woman was but a blurred dash in mine.) 

An admirer of those who can make a camera capture a moment in time as if it were spread across a canvas, telling a tale as beautifully as a best-selling author, I felt, as I often do, compelled to congratulate the artist, the photographer who captured that image. 

I also shared my seems-like-forever admiration of those magnificent flying machines and let slip my long-time desire, not yet come-to-be, to ride in one of the winged wonders. 

To my surprise, I soon had an invitation from the pilot who had wielded the camera, for a “round-trip ticket – Galesburg to Galesburg” – at this year’s fly-in. 

To no one’s surprise, I accepted the offer.

Last Thursday morning, I used that ticket – and, thanks to the kindness of another pilot, my dad, who trained in Stearman biplanes during World War II, flew in formation in another Stearman. I captured that story in earlier post. In this one, I’ll share what it was like to fly, open-cockpit, wind in my face. 

Dad and I joined our pilot friends as the sun was nearing its peak. Our feet nearly off the ground, we hurried down row four of the field where the planes are parked north and northeast of the hangars at the Galesburg, Illinois airport, and approached our pilots and their planes.

Stearman biplanes have two seats, one per cockpit – one in front of the other. Pilots fly from the rear cockpit. Co-pilots or guests occupy the front cockpit. 

One of my fears through the years has always been, “Oh, yeah, klutz that I am, I’ll probably step in the wrong place when I try to get in the plane.” Fortunately, that didn’t happen. The wing was clearly marked “No Step” beyond the area where pilots and passengers can safely climb. Amazingly, I kept my feet where they belonged.

Getting up on the wing and into the cockpit was a piece of cake. I’m a boater, so I’ve thrown my leg up and over the side of a boat many a time. This wasn’t much different, except that, instead of grabbing ahold of the black wrought iron uprights on the dock, I was placing my hand  in a handle on the wing to brace myself. 

I slid down into the cockpit, careful not to hit the stick, over which was draped the “Snoopy and the Red Baron”-style helmet I’d get to wear. 

My pilot friend gave me a quick course on how the seat belt works, “Do this, then this, grab the strap that’s hanging down in the middle, put it here, snap this over,” and so on. Bottom straps in place, we started again with the top ones. I fumbled. 

“Don’t be nervous. You’ll get it,” the pilot said. 

Nervous? Was I nervous? 

Was I nervous about the flight or again feeling my klutziness taking over? I really didn’t think I was the least bit worried about the flight. 

I put my helmet on and felt a little like Snoopy about to go on a mission atop his doghouse-turned-fighter plane.

“Okay,” my pilot friend said. “Be sure you keep your legs clear of the stick. That’s how I steer. And you won’t want to put your feet on the rudders.” 

The two sturdy-looking metal pedals – one on each side -- looked so far away to me, that I felt the same as I did when I was a kid riding the tractor with my dad. 

“I couldn’t drive (in this case, fly) this thing if I wanted to. The pedals are a million miles away,” I thought.  

But, were they really, or is that just how it seemed to me? 

Looking back, I can’t with certainty remember. 

The pilot said something, I think, about how we’d go down the aisle between planes, across the grass, to the runway. He told me that one of the things about planes like this one was that we couldn’t see in front of us. I answered, “That’s what I’ve heard,” or some such thing.

“Prop clear,” he called. 

“Wow,” I thought. Just like Richard Bach says in all of his aviation books. They really do that!

The engine started, that same sound I’d heard so often from the ground, from my former home a mile from the airport, but louder – the purr of the plane more like a roar so close up.

But, oh how I love that sound, even amplified as it seemed that day.

As we started down the runway, my pilot told me how we’d use an S-motion so we could see the runway. I answered, “Yes, dad told me about that.” 

Then as we approached a turn, he said something about the yellow lines, solid and broken, and what they meant. But even with my headset, I didn’t clearly hear what he said over the sound of the engine.

I nodded as if I did, but if my life had depended on knowing what he said, I’d hope I would have asked him to tell me again. 

It’s amazing how calm I felt as we taxied north on the runway – nothing like the nervousness I’d felt before, riding in a four-seat private aircraft when I was about twenty or a commuter plane a few years later. 

It just felt right – as if I were meant to ride in one of these planes or had in some other dimension. We left the ground so gently I barely knew we were airborne, and the feeling as we passed over my former home was more incredible than I’d imagined. 

Oh, I thought, it looks so little – the neighborhood, the houses. All those years I waved at Stearman pilots, they couldn’t see me. I must have been as a flyspeck on a window, barely visible at all. And as quickly as we were over the neighborhood, we were over the farms my neighbors and I and our children once passed on our bikes, then further we went over trees and fields – corn and beans and pastures, over ponds and creeks, highways and blacktops, gravel roads and dirt lanes. 

I looked down; I looked to the left and the right. I looked back in the mirror at my pilot, trying to capture for posterity the look on his face as he flew – that combination of “this is serious, I have to pay attention,” and “this is so much fun, lucky guy I am” that must cross the face of all who fly these birds. 

I felt the breeze lapping gently against my face.

I watched my dad and his pilot, first at five o’clock, then at seven. I listened to the pilots call out their positions as we flew in formation. I heard the words of other pilots talking over the radio, too. 

I looked down again and thought, “Richard Bach is right, those words he penned in his books. The houses, the cars, the trees -- they do all look like toys.” 

As the planes in formation banked a bit side to side, I may have held a little tighter to the side and I may have checked the strap to make sure I didn’t lose my helmet, but I did not, at any time, think, “Oh no, what if we crash? Eek, what if I fall out?”

What I did feel up there was a feeling of peace, of tranquility, of trust in my pilot and his Stearman, of joy in the experience – and more than a little happiness for people like my pilot friend who’ve made the choices in their lives that led them to this adventure. 

As we descended to 300 feet and circled the airport for our landing, I think I had another feeling too – a twinge of it, at least – perhaps just a bit of regret that my choices hadn’t led me to a similar fate. 

Remember those blocks they made for tricycles when we Baby Boomers were kids – the ones that made the too-far-away pedals closer so you could reach them? 

Do you think they still make them? If I’m going to fly one of those things, I need to reach the rudders, you know. 

At this stage in the game, I don’t think my legs are going to grow any longer. 

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012  

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Head in the clouds

For years, the people who know me know this: I have my head in the clouds. 

Dreamer, I am. 

It keeps me a bit sometimes from fitting in well in their “real” world, but it’s the world where I can imagine what might be, dream, and see some of them come true. 

This is the tale of two pilots, a whole bunch of biplanes, the woman they inspired, and a magical ride over the Prairie State. 

It’s also about a couple more pilots who made a dream come true.

I remember as a little girl, standing next to our Western Illinois farm house and watching an airplane fly slow and low near our home. 

Much later, I learned that during my childhood and well into my teen years, my favorite author, Richard Bach, flew a biplane over many a small town, landed in numerous hayfields across the Midwest. 

As I read his books and learned of his barnstorming days, I always wondered what it would have been like, small impressionable kid, to have had the opportunity to have a plane drop in my field, to see a sign, reading “10-minute ride, $3,” to look down in wide-eyed wonder on the home where I lived – to ride with Richard Bach or another pilot like him.

Growing up, there was another pilot in my life – a World War II vet, home from the war, back on the farm, raising a bunch of kids, aviator wings packed away. His youngsters, among them a freckle-faced girl, knew their dad had flown airplanes, somewhere, sometime a long time ago. 

As time went on and biplanes from that war, Stearman aircraft, began to congregate just a mile from the girl-grown-woman’s home, she learned the open-cockpit wonders were the same planes in which her dad had learned to fly. 

The woman drove for more than 20 years past the Galesburg airport on her way to work each day; she remembered the photo on her grandparents’ wall of that young aviator; she read again and again Richard Bach’s books of aviation and inspiration. 

As time went by, she wondered what it would be like to fly, wind in her face in one of those planes. A little more time passed and she felt a pull, a “gotta-do-this” feeling. Eventually, it became a “can’t-not-do-it” need. 

I am that girl turned woman. 

Last year, I planned to spend a day at Galesburg’s Stearman Fly-in. I sent a couple emails, made phone call or two, and tried to arrange a flight. It wasn’t to be. 

Then, fly-in done, through the wonder called social media, my path crossed that of a Stearman pilot. One thing led to another, and I had an invite to “Come out to the airport next year and I’ll take you up.” 

That year couldn’t fly by fast enough. 

Back to Bach for a minute – he wrote of barnstorming near the Monmouth, Illinois airport in at least one of his books, of taking a young girl and her grandfather over the farm, of the farmer’s wife waving at the duo. 

Bach also wrote in his book “Illusions” of an advanced soul, Donald Shimoda, barnstorming with him – imaginary, perhaps to others, but more real to Bach than most of the flesh-and-blood people he’d encountered in his life.

Over the past few days, as I got more and more excited about my flight, I could tell my dad was itching to fly as badly as I was. When I met my pilot friend at the airport, I told him, “My dad trained in these,” and asked, “Know anyone who would take him up?”

Of course he did!

So yesterday, wind in our faces, wings on his chest, Dad and I flew in formation over a home where I once stood and watched Stearman overhead, to the Monmouth airport where I could imagine Richard and Shimoda flying with passengers – a girl and a man, both with child-hearts and a love of antique biplanes.

The excitement upon taking off, wind in my face, gentle turns and sharper banks, and feeling of tranquility in the air were all I’d hoped they’d be and more. 

And, the feeling of camaraderie with fellow flyers – one who stood beside me when I was a child, pointing up, as excited as I was, saying, “Look, it’s a plane!” – was beyond description. 

It was just as I’d imagined, growing up reading Bach’s books and feeling pride in my heart for my Dad’s service and piloting skills. And better than I’d dreamed, finding two modern-day barnstormer-types so willing to help my dad and me create this special memory.

I did wonder for a minute, though, as we were landing, if we were as characters in one of Bach’s books, Richard and Shimoda flying, a “girl” and a man as passengers, while a woman stood in the tent on the ground, big smile on her face, waving. 

My mom’s ready to fly! 

I’ll be back, Stearman.

© Ann Tracy Mueller 2012   

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