“Navajo, seven, five, two, niner, Juliet to Chico Ground.”
The radio stayed silent for a couple of minutes then,
“This is Chico Ground. Come again.”
Steve repeated,
“This is seven, five, two, niner, Juliet, descending for landing into Chico. Is Bob Rux around?”
“Hang on, let me take a look.”
Chico Ground consisted of a radio in a room adjacent to the front counter of the lodge and a voice at the other end. Whoever happened to be registering guests or taking dinner reservations also answered any aircraft calls. The lodge staff was trained to use the radio; it’s not hard. If an airplane was ready to land, the pilot called on the radio and asked Ground to prepare the runway. It was Ground’s responsibility to acknowledge the aircraft on the radio and notify the pilot that the runway would be ready in a few minutes. Then they would find someone to drive a truck down the road about a mile and block traffic while the airplane landed.
The runway is a long, two-lane county road about thirty feet wide. The northern end of the road begins two miles north of Chico with the southern end running directly next to the lodge. It ends one third of a mile past the lodge in a narrow box canyon. Both edges of the road drop off into drainage ditches immediately beyond the edges of the pavement. At the one-mile mark, it makes a slight turn and runs parallel to a pasture on the left and a sixty foot tall plateau to the right. At first glance, there’s not much around for miles but fields, a few trees, fences, ditches and graze land. However, landing on the road is dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. There are obstacles on all sides so if you miscalculate your speed or the length of the airstrip, you’ll either crash directly into the second-story floor of the lodge, into the face of a mountain or into the 60 foot plateau on the right. The only automobile traffic that ever travels the road is Chico’s guests or staff. About one mile before the lodge, the road makes a slight turn and is the perfect place to stop traffic to allow planes to land. The road became a runway when Chico became a favorite place for Montana ranchers to stop in for a great meal. The Livingston airport is thirty miles northeast so it isn’t convenient to rent a car and drive the half-hour into Chico for dinner. There is a private airstrip about five miles due north called The Flying Y that we occasionally used if the weather got bad and we needed to land in a hurry. I’ve never landed there but several loads of skydivers have had to use it during summer thundershowers.
“Ground to seven, five, two, niner, Juliet.”
“Go ahead Chico Ground.”
Steve smiled at the woman’s voice coming from the radio. It was the hostess that always worked the weekend of the boogie.
“We haven’t seen Bob yet, but we expect him anytime.”
“Is any other skydiver there?” Steve asked.
“Not yet.”
Steve turned to Brent and said,
“Well, it looks like we are the first ones here this year.”
“Chico Ground, we are about five minutes from you and will continue to descend until you can get a truck out on the runway.”
“Someone just went out. I’ll let you know when he has traffic blocked and I can clear you to land.”
We crossed the valley, over the muddy Yellowstone River, and strained to find the little lodge nestled in the foothills of the tall mountains.
“There she is.” Steve said. “We‘re dead on. I like it when my calculations are right.”
Brent and I lifted up out of our seats and looked out the window to see where Steve was pointing. She was small and hard to find. Chico was nestled in the foothills but to spot her, we had to fly down the middle of the valley and fly toward at her from the north. If you fly too close to the mountains, she ends up sitting right beneath the airplane and is hard to find. Steve had flown here several times and he knew exactly where she was, so we didn’t waste any time zigzagging back and forth across the valley looking for it.
The valley was beautiful. Pastures were green from the spring rains and squares quilted the valley from mountain to mountain. The Yellowstone River was still high from the runoff and ran wide and muddy through the valley. There were no clouds for miles. We were at about six thousand feet above the ground when we passed over the main highway that led from Gardiner to Livingston. Chico is about five miles off the highway. Steve descended the airplane until we were at four thousand feet where we were directly over the runway. No truck yet, but a few cars were driving out of the parking lot. It was about 12:30 p.m. and the day was a beauty.
“Wow, look at that new motel.”
My cheek was pressed against the right passenger window so I could see the new addition to the Chico compound. Since we had been to Chico the year earlier, a fire had devastated the old motel that stood just north of the main lodge. A seventy-yard courtyard lay between the lodge and the new rough hewn log motel that replaced the old one.
“Too bad it’s not finished for this year’s boogie. It looks nice.” Steve answered.
I had shown Brent pictures of the old motel with airplanes parked in front of each door. He hadn’t been there the year we flew five airplanes from the Ogden Drop Zone. He had only been to Chico one other year and had only jumped one day so he hadn’t experienced the whole Chico weekend.
A parking lot and forty yards of grass separated the new lodge and the runway. There are two entrances to the parking lot a hundred yards apart. And there is just enough room for planes to land, taxi past the first entrance, and pull into the southern one to find a place to park. Some years there were so many airplanes parked in the lot there was no room for cars. Pilots pulled right up to their rooms and tied down each wing to secure the plane for the night. One year, we counted twenty planes parked in the makeshift tarmac. Beyond the southern opening of the parking lot lies the courtyard. After that, the runway narrows to a one-lane road canopied with trees and the steep mountainside leading to Emigration Peak.
The plane flew steady and smooth as we began to circle the resort as we descended to land. I sat back, nestled into my seat and thought about the weekend and wished Patty was here. I got to missing Patty every time I made a jump and as we passed over the spot where we decided to ride the airplane down that summer, I wondered how her son was doing without her.
Do not land here.
Inaudibly the words flitted through my mind. Hardly noticing, I disregarded the brief thought and leaned against the window again to look outside. Everything looked fine. I suddenly remembered being twenty-one, and driving through an intersection on Third West in Salt Lake. It was mid-day and I was driving somewhere unimportant now. From somewhere in my peripheral vision I saw a car coming toward me from side traffic. I instantly knew that I was in danger of being broad-sided by the oncoming car. As the car passed through the red light overhead, I tapped on the gas pedal, then the brakes, then the gas—so confused about what to do and wondered whether I should stop or go, that I panicked and froze.
Go!
A very loud voice said clearly. And instantly, I pressed the gas pedal so hard I raced through the intersection as the car missed my back bumper by a fraction of an inch. The voice screaming in my head was so clear I looked to the passenger seat to see who was there. No one sat there, but the voice was so audible and unmistakable I knew someone had ridden through the intersection with me. I pulled the car over and sat and shook and cried until my head cleared and I stopped sweating.
I never forgot the clarity of that man’s voice. I cannot tell you who he was, but the voice was so familiar and so clear. Still, after twenty-five years I can hear every tone of that single word.
I blinked the thought away and look forward through the airplane windshield. It was a calm, beautiful day outside the airplane windshield. I noticed speckled dots of bugs on the blue-sky background of the windshield. Again, louder and more distinct I heard his voice.
Do not land here.
I reached forward to rub Brent’s right shoulder just to let him know I was there. The words I had heard were so brief, so instantaneous, that I remember wondering how I heard that sentence quicker than it could have been said. Then I disregarded it a second time. So many times I have second-guessed myself. So many times I have disregarded a thought that later manifested itself to be something of value—a warning, confirmation, or recognition of a voice or smell. I second-guessed myself and disregarded it again.
Around we went, circling Chico, and the third time,
Do Not Land Here!
We circled the resort one more time. Everyone sat quietly, not moving, just anticipating the next five minutes it would take to be wheels down and taxiing down the runway.
If you have ever had someone talk to you that wasn’t there, you know the feeling I had — rather creepy, but so real. So real the fourth time, and so clear, it came again.
DO NOT LAND HERE!
And for a split second I contemplated reaching over to Steve and shaking my head,
"No, No."
He would have aborted the landing and gone where ever I asked. We trusted each other enough to respect each other’s fears. But I didn’t nod or ask. I just sat there, quiet, wondering what right I had to ask Steve to not land here. I thought that if something was wrong, he would know. I didn’t want to be a whiner or second guess his flying. What if it was nothing? How could I say, “A voice told me not to land here?”
At a thousand feet I looked out the side window again, thinking how calm the trees stood against the hillside. How beautiful the weather was for a June day in Montana, and how great the veal would taste tonight. A stream of a thousand images raced across my brain. Kristin at home, still pouting because she couldn’t come; an English class at the college; our house; the piles of folders at work that needing proofreading; pigs; golf balls; my unpacked parachute inside my gear bag; Patty’s red hair against her teal colored jacket. It would have taken me years to say out loud what passed across my mind in an instant. I saw important days and every unimportant event as though I had remembered every tiny thing that had ever happened to me. I didn’t recognize it as my life flashing. And how trite that would have seemed to me at the time.
I saw my Dad lying on a blanket at Liberty Park reading the newspaper. We had walked there from our house nearby to have a family picnic. The memory looked like a loving family spending time together. Dad would have left a couple weeks later. I saw Mom hollering through the side window in our 1956 Chevy station wagon telling Kevin to pop the clutch. And David’s wry smile as he and I hid in the pyracantha bushes one hot hide-and-seek summer night.
I remembered the red, white and blue jeans that I bought at Grand Central when I was a child. I had saved my allowance and it was the very first purchase I remember making. They were hip 60’s pants that I would wear to the July parade in Salt Lake. The pants flashed to a recent weekend where we celebrated Father’s Day with our kids and Brent’s parents and his white shirt that I wore to bed that night.
Do not land here! Go to the Flying Y.
I watched the black truck slow to the curve in the road, U-turn, and a man get out and walk back to a car that had pulled to a stop behind him. I imagined how he told the driver that an airplane was going to land here and saw the driver tilt his head out of the window looking up to spot our white wings. My actions seemed very calculated, slow-like and animated as I shifted in my seat.
“Two, six, niner, Juliet. You are cleared for landing.”
The Chico voice sang through the radio. The depth of the voice and its message felt complicated like several events strung together to create a picture that I wasn’t able to piece together. There was a missing part; the part that explained my reservations; the part that said everything makes sense; the part that made reality possible.
Steve said, “Ready?” Brent and I both nodded and we turned into final approach with a hundred feet between us and the road.
I leaned back against the seat and instantly regretted not saying something to Steve. My stomach churned as I tried to sort out how I could explain to him that a man who was sitting next to me told me not to land here. Was I going crazy? Maybe I was tired. Whatever it was, I thought I could control it by not acknowledging and not reacting. Even now, remembering the turn my stomach took, I hate myself for being silent. It would have been so easy for Steve to just pull up, apply a slight touch to the throttle, and rise up out of the landing pattern. I agreed to this fate whole-heartedly by not squeaking out a resounding,
No!!!!
And I absolutely knew, without any hesitation that it was wrong to stay silent. But I did.
And then with a calmness and surety the voice said to me one last thing:
This will be like no other landing you have ever had.
I glanced over at Steve’s flight bag and the orange Paramedic Jump Bag that sat on the seat beside me. I reached to pull the flight bag between me and Brent’s seat and then thought how silly it was and pulled my hand away. I still feel the coarse weave of the fabric on my fingertips and the familiar pressure of the bag against my leg. Then I slid deep into my seat and for the last time felt my spine settle against the leather upholstery. The slow motion of my hand cinched my seat belt tighter, I leaned my head against the back of my seat, turned to see outside, and sighed.
I accepted.
I resolved to die without even consciously knowing that is exactly what would happen. I accepted my fate instead of changing it and that makes me angry. Then I watched the airplane’s shadow cross the top of the black truck parked forty feet directly below. I relaxed my hands into my lap and thought how nice Brent’s shoulder still lingered in my hand and how much I loved him.
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