By Pete Salzman, Special to the Journal
Did you know you can donate to Veteran students here at Pellissippi State Community College? As we highlight Veterans Day, we at Imaginary Gardens invite you to join us in recognizing and honoring Veterans’ valiant service by investing in their future through the Veteran Support Fund. Just click the link below, select your donation amount, and designate your contribution to the “Veteran Support Fund.” Imaginary Gardens appreciates your generous support.
Thank you and have a blessed day honoring this nation’s current and retired soldiers,
– Emma G. Harrison, Editor-in-Chief, Imaginary Gardens
Imagine what it would be like to be a bird and live in the sky. Call me crazy, but I did exactly that, in a sense of speaking. I would leave this earth and meet the sky, where I would live for hours a day. I loved it.
Yes, I did live in the sky, and I did fly in the sense of speaking. I was a crew member on a UH 1 helicopter known as a Huey from 1975 to 1995.
For me, there was no better place that I could be. I would soar past birds, through the clouds, and where the sky was filled with moments of awe. I could see all the Hues of color that swirled between the sun’s rays. I could feel the raindrops kiss my skin before they hit the earth on rainy days, raindrops that displayed the colors of the rainbow reflecting through the sun’s golden light. On clear days, I could bask in the sun’s rays, with its warmth beaming everywhere and no place for me to hide, just the wide-open range of the sky. The air swirled around me as the rush of the wind would smack my face while slapping my loose clothing against my body, as if my clothes were a flag snapping in a storm, inflicting a little pain at times. Wintertime snow would dance playfully around me as if to tease me to catch a snowflake or two, then lightly fall to the ground, blanketing the earth with the silence of a white, snowy cover. In the sky, I was untouchable and free.
Flying wasn’t without its challenges. I could feel gravity tugging me back as if to say I wasn’t allowed to leave the earth that I called home. I would gradually gain speeds up to 100 miles per hour, yet gravity relentlessly tried to pull my body back down to Earth. While soaring 3,000 to 5,000 feet, objects on Earth were transformed. Houses were tidy little blocks, stacked upon each other, that resembled children’s building block toys; cars became ants crawling back to their colonies. From a distance, life for once seemed as if it had come to a standstill.
Flying lower, at the tree-top height, objects zoomed by like blurred lines on a page. I could feel the speed and the gravity pulling me back down to a place I naturally belonged. I always kept a keen eye out to keep from hitting a tree or tall object, for this could be disastrous, causing severe injury or death. As evening fell, I could see the sunset creeping behind the trees and then sliding past the landscape, turning the earth into darkness. The earth would vanish except for little dots of light like a constellation that fell to the ground. Even in the darkness of night, I never felt lost because the lights let me know that the earth still existed.
The more I flew, the more I wanted to fly. It was like an addiction. I volunteered for every flight I could get, flying days and nights. Most of the time, it was the two pilots and myself unless I was flying in the co-pilot seat. When we were on the ground, it was saluting and addressing each other militarily, but in the air, we spoke on a first-name basis.
I felt a sense of peace up in the sky. Once I was in the air, I left my worries behind. I was living in the sky for only a moment of my life.
Today, my life is different. I mostly spend quiet days sitting outside in a rocking chair, gazing up at the sky that felt like home, waiting to hear the sound of the Huey flying overhead. It never fails to stir my soul. Age is a force that is inevitable and cannot be escaped. My adventures are only memories that are etched from my life and scribbled down on this blank page. Thoughts that were once real emerge from my past as an old soldier, and I hope the last thing I will hear in this life is the rhythm and popping sound of the rotor blades from a Huey helicopter coming to take me back to the skies forever.
