Occasionally my dad sends pictures updating me on his life. As a bush pilot of 36-plus years working in Alaska, you can probably guess that these are not your typical photos. More often than not they’re aerial shots of the Brooks and Alaska Ranges, shot from his plane and usually containing a wing or a tire in the frame. Half the time they’re blurry or crooked. The other half of the time they’re his airplane. Just parked. Nothing else. Just that. Like it’s his fourth kid and he’s just so proud to see it head off on its two thousandth flight.
This has always been normal for me. This was my life growing up. My dad showed off mountains and his planes from all over Alaska. I flew in Super Cubs and Cessnas and had friends who owned sled dog teams. We wore bunny boots and when I wanted to go to a friend’s house I just hopped on the snow-machine and drove there. We cross-country skied in elementary school gym class (barf) and had midnight sun soccer tournaments where the older you were the later you got to play (the last games started around midnight). We drove 6.5 hours to get to the closest state tournaments and in the winter we drove on the completely frozen river—in our car—to either get the best view of the northern lights (which were ridiculous, by the way) or to just get to the airport faster.
I’ll be the first to say it, my childhood was weird. But looking back and comparing it to my life now, it was pretty damn cool.
