“And you’ve been a bush pilot ever since?” Sandy said. “Boy, that must be an exciting life.”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it exciting exactly. A little romantic maybe—everything about Alashka is romantic.”
“Alashka?” Sandy looked puzzled. “I notice you always say it that way.”
“It’s an ancient Aleutian term. Means the ‘big land.’”
“It’s big all right,” Sandy said, glancing out of the cockpit window. Below the plane, twin mountain peaks reached up through the wispy clouds. Cupped in the valley between them lay a gigantic glacier whose front was a solid wall of ice ten miles across and as high as a fifteen-story building.
“That’s why there are plenty of jobs for bush pilots,” Parker explained. “We’re like taxi drivers back in the States. To get around in the big land you have to take giant steps. A quick trip to the city may mean a hop of a hundred miles or more. You should see Lake Hood on a Saturday morning in the summer—that’s in Anchorage, my home town. Hundreds of little planes.”
“It looks like a supermarket parking lot,” Sandy finished the thought for him. “Professor Crowell told us.”
“It’s worse. More like Times Square in New York.”
“But since so many people up here have their own planes, doesn’t it cut down on your jobs?” Sandy wanted to know.
“Not really. Most of the amateurs are pretty cautious, as they should be. They’ll only fly in perfect weather, and stick to the safe air routes. When there’s a tough job to be done in a hurry, they call on a bush pilot. I’ve carried everything from heavy machinery to medical supplies. I’ve been a flying ambulance, too; I don’t know how many lives I’ve helped to save in the back country.”