Determination

What is it about the sky that makes us wonder?  Its blueness?  Its vastness?  Its usefulness or mystery or distance from home?  Whatever it is, we seem to keep our necks craned and our eyes wide.

I was walking around my grandparents' place the other morning, trying to identify the low-and-slow a few thousand feet above my head, when my eye caught something odd.

I'm no botanical expert, but I know one thing about that tree: it couldn't thrive in the space it was placed.  Maybe it had a biological issue within itself.  Maybe there was an environmental obstacle, or maybe some other plant grew in to block its place.  By whatever method, nature blocked the conventional route - but that tree wanted to go up, and it found a way.

I think this tree embodies the spirit of aviation both historically and today.  Humans found themselves shackled to the ground they walked on until they realized they could make vehicles that skidded or rolled.  Then they realized they could make their vehicles float and opened up a whole new world of discovery, but even once they discovered ways to penetrate the sky I believe they've never stopped looking up.  They probably never will.  At our roots we are firmly in the dust, and to dust we will return, but we will stretch upward and outward until that day comes.

Today, pilots find themselves simultaneously creating new ways to reach the heavens and dealing with new hurdles that try to keep them on the ground.  For some, it may be excessive regulation.  For others, personal health.  Maybe it's the financial burden, or the risk flying places on life itself.  But like that tree, we find a way.  We adapt, and grow, and find a way to be further into the air than we were yesterday.