10 minute read
Winning Story
TOP STORY
Tracing History
Following the Oregon and California trails
STORY AND PHOTOS BY PETER SHANNON, EAA 1248421
Each day this week, we’re running one of the winners of EAA’s Pilot Your Own Adventure Contest, supported by Flight Outfitters. This entry placed first, out of 267 entries received. While all stories have been edited for grammar and style prior to publication, they were judged as submitted, with no editing of any kind. — Ed.
IN THE PIONEER days, St. Joseph, Missouri, defined the frontier. Before the transcontinental railroad and telegraph, it was a natural assembly point for westbound pioneer wagon trains. Reached via steamboat, St. Joseph marked the beginning of the Overland Trail into the vast territories, offering provisions and even a last night of hotel accommodation before months of hardship on the journey to Salt Lake City and beyond, California.
So it was there that I found myself standing in the midday July heat outside the Pony Express National Museum, eastern terminus of the venerated mail service connecting California in 10 days via galloping horse.
Gathering provisions for my own journey west, I had a restored Citabria 7ECA to fly to its new home in California and aimed to experience the route pioneers took, to see the scenery they saw, and hopefully, to glimpse from the air remnants from that time of their journey.
SEE FLIGHT / PAGE 6
PHOTO BY BAILEY FARRELL
PETER SHANNON
DEVIL’S GATE
FLIGHT / PAGE 4
The flight would be low and slow and follow as closely as possible the route of California-bound pioneers, tracking the Oregon Trail up the Platte River and over South Pass in Wyoming, branching southwest to the Great Salt Lake, and crossing the desert westward to join the Humboldt River across Nevada to Donner Pass and thereby into California.
An honest stick-and-rudder flyer, the Citabria is a fine aircraft for this journey, offering tremendous all-around visibility and spacious comfort for long periods in the air.
Finishing my errands around town and laden with everything a good camp kitchen would need, I loaded the provisions. Lifting off from St. Joseph, I turned west into Kansas and into an undulating landscape brilliant with sunshine. The road west draped over regular depressions and elevations of corn to the horizon. Overflying Marysville, I joined the Little Blue River northwest and upstream into Nebraska, the farm towns of Fairbury and Hastings passing on the vast flattening level floor below.
Toward evening, the Platte River came into view, a sprawling expanse of sandy brown tones in the softening light, more quicksand than water. I joined the Platte at Fort Kearny, a prominent U.S. Army outpost and way station where pioneers could resupply. Passing west into the setting sun, flashes of lightning blanketed the far horizon. Setting down on a grass strip gracing the shore of
PONY EXPRESS
Johnson Lake, I prepared camp and a fire as booming thundershowers passed to the north.
After breakfast, I flew upstream to Julesburg, an Overland trading post where westward pioneers turned to the North Platte toward Scotts Bluff. The terrain gradually rising, the changing landscape revealed telltale signs of the high country ahead. Distant bluffs and mountains formed the horizon to my left.
The engine was a relaxed thrum, 90 mph indicated. There was no rush on this July day. My window swung full open, I looked straight down, the warm summer air swirling through the cockpit. The river sprawled in braided muddy channels below me. The river basin was alive with wildlife, from deer and waterfowl to birds of prey. A flat and seemingly infinite expanse of prairie extended northeast. It is staggering to contemplate how vast, empty, and beautiful this land remains, much as the pioneers must have encountered it.
General aviation pilots see our country from a unique vantage point. Neither on the surface bound to a road nor miles up in the stratosphere, our type of flying gives us the perspective to see the landscape as a whole, how it integrates together and changes over each horizon.
In a small airplane, we can we truly absorb the beauty, the vastness, and even the history of our country. While we often fly with the destination taking primacy, if we make a journey mirroring the route of our forebears, following the land and waterways, moving slowly and with our senses tuned outside the aircraft, flying can be a vivid portal into our history, to witness the past firsthand.
So it felt as I passed Fort Laramie, guarding the confluence of the North Platte and Laramie rivers, and then departed Casper, Wyoming, the morning of my flight over South Pass and the Continental Divide.
Joining the Sweetwater River and following its shimmering ribbon past Independence Rock and through Devils Gate, I flew over land that seemed scarcely to have changed since 1850. Wagon tracks were clearly visibly below me, with their meanderings of people and animals standing out compared to smoothly sweeping motorized paths.
Onward, up the Sweetwater until it is just a trace and then higher still to South Pass. Arid, empty. The terrain and temperature rising, I coaxed my airplane higher to assure myself I’d make it over today. I was in an empty place, not a single soul visible below. Ruins of the occasional stagecoach station lay in a square outline, yard and station-house weathering in the dry desolation.
At the pass, the Wind River Mountains above to my right and dry high country stretching gradually downward farther west, nearly everything was as it must have appeared to the pioneers. As a witness to their journey, my respect grew at each mile. At this moment over lonely desolation, I better understood them and their resolve to journey through an unforgiving land.
Over the next two days, my path took me past Fort Bridger and through Ogden Canyon to the Great Salt Lake. I skirted the north shore and crossed the Great Salt Lake Desert to join the headwaters of the Humboldt River, following it across Nevada to Carson Sink and the base of Donner Pass. Waiting for a break in the weather through a night of storms over the Sierras, I slipped over Donner Pass in the early morning calm and down into California’s Central Valley, Sacramento, and the Bay Area.
Living history through flight was a rewarding experience in ways I couldn’t imagine. It was like discovering a window into the beauty of our country and our legacy in this amazing land. Left wanting to explore more, I’m already researching the next journey.
PRIZE WINNER A HAPPY CAMPER
Thank goodness for friends.
Peter Shannon, EAA 124842, said he entered EAA’s Pilot Your Own Adventure Contest at the urging of a friend, and he’s been happy he followed that advice, since he took first place, winning an AirVenture camping experience during the 2021 fly-in convention. The contest was supported by Flight Outfitters.
“My friend knew about my flight from last summer,” said Peter, who has been a pilot since 19. “I do love writing and wanted to document the journey, and the underlying reasons why I took this flight, and what I experienced along the way.”
This is his fourth trip to AirVenture and fourth time camping, but first in a camper. “I absolutely love the campsite and camper. It’s been an experience beyond my expectations. I’ve been having so much fun.”
Flight Outfitters provided the camper and gear, and all he brought was his hammock, Peter said. He’s been enjoying the vintage and antique aircraft, and wandering among the warbirds, ultralights and STOL airplanes.
PHOTO BY BAILEY FARRELL
OSHKOSH MOMENTS
WomenVenture Lunch Speaker Shares Her Story to Inspire Others
BY BARBARA A. SCHMITZ
AIRVENTURE TODAY STAFF
Col. Allison Black of the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command said she never wanted to be in the spotlight, but she’s learned the importance of sharing her story to inspire others.
And when an 8-year-old walked up to the microphone during Wednesday’s WomenVenture Power Luncheon to ask her how she can achieve her goal of becoming a pilot, it was clear her story did just that.
“For being so bold, turn around and look at all these people,” Black told the young girl. “You just took the first step to being successful.” She recommended the girl watch videos, read books, and go to the airfield.
“I am in awe,” Black said. “I only wish I knew what I wanted to do when I was your age. You have so many opportunities. Look around and decide if you want to fly big, little, fast, or slow planes, and then you just have to choose what it will be.”
Black has always taken advantage of opportunities in her career. She enlisted in the Air Force in 1992 and served as a survival, evasion, resistance, and escape specialist, as well as deputy of the Commander’s Action Group for AFSOC. She has flown more than 3,400 hours, with 2,000 combat hours in the AC-130H Spectre gunship and the U-28A Draco. She is the first female AC-130H Spectre navigator to open fire in combat operations and the first female Air Force Combat Action Medal recipient. Today she is the vice commander of the 24th Special Operations Wing, Air Force Special Operations Command.
She said she first learned of the impact she could have on other women in 2001 when she helped the Northern Alliance get a stronghold on the territory in Afghanistan. Gen. Dostum, working with a U.S. team on the ground, called the Taliban by radio. Black later learned that Dostum said: “You are so pathetic that American women are killing you. Surrender now.”
A few days later, the Special Forces team came to their home base carrying an AK-47 from the general, with a note thanking her for her work. She also learned
PHOTO BY BARBARA A. SCHMITZ
that Dostum told Afghan women the story of American women on airplanes and said, “If you continue to fight, you too will have those freedoms.”
It was then she realized the importance of telling and sharing her story.
COL. ALLISON BLACK
“I never set out to make that kind of impact,” Black said. “I just wanted to be good at what I do. I believe it doesn’t matter what you like look, what gender you are. You just need to be really good at what you do, and people will want to be around you.”
Her advice to the attendees was threefold: Be humble, credible, and approachable.
“Strive to be humble,” she said. “Work to be credible through your actions, and create an environment where you are approachable.”
That means you need to be confident and share your story. “I hope I am able to inspire,” Black said. “I’ve had great leaders who have forced me into jobs that I didn’t think I was able to do. But now I’m old enough to say I did pull it off. Experiences gave me the ability to problem-solve. I don’t need to be the expert in the room, if I surround myself with experts ….”
Black said you also need to take advantage of opportunities, and be willing to say yes.
“Growing up, I never felt like I needed someone who looked like me to chase a role,” she said. “But I learned how valuable that is, having the same background, living the same struggles, to show that it can be done.”
She said she also learned how to block out the naysayers and stay focused on where she was going and what she was doing. “I don’t see the awkward stares or hear the awkward comments. I’ve always believed my actions speak for me.”
She said she was grateful for being able to share her story with their WomenVenture crowd. “You all have a story,” she told the attendees. “I empower you to share it.”
