WORTH THE READ: CARMINE MOWBRAY GUEST EDITORIAL

When the owner of the local FBO ordered fancy printing from our little Montana print shop and couldn’t pay his bill, he agreed to teach my husband and me how to get an airplane in the sky and back on the ground safely. We decided to buy an airplane and the CFI located a 1957 150-hp TriPacer. I was so ignorant, I was expecting a tri-motor. When 6928-Delta puttered in off the runway, I fell in love with our simple fabric, tricycle gear four-seat single.

It was paper chart, watch, and E6B days. You planned cross-county flights by penciling in your waypoints. Being surrounded by mountains, our CFI was a stickler about slow flight and preached, “Every landing is a short-field landing!” Training I appreciate today.

Near Montana’s Continental Divide, winters are cold but pretty clear. We could fly nearly all year. Avgas was 57¢ a gallon, and our banker let us park in his old hangar for free. As some do, we coveted that ever-faster, sleeker aircraft, and eventually owned and flew retractables, then a 300-hp Turbo T-Tail Lance for 16 years. It was great for business and long cross-countries with the four kids. But I felt the best way to see the West was around a hundred knots, a few hundred feet over the high ground. Where you see spray off a waterfall; mountain goats trekking the ledges; a small herd of elk grazing, or the circular ripples surrounding a moose in a pond. My heart was always back at places like Meadow Creek beneath the massive limestone terraces, where we had spent a soggy three-day Memorial Day weekend in a pup tent waiting for the rain to stop. “If this is so miserable, why am I enjoying it so much?” I’d asked myself.

RAF co-founder Chuck Jarecki stopped often at my Polson home for coffee and to share flying stories. He flew me to a few Montana work parties where I joined upbeat volunteers. Whether it was chopping sagebrush, clearing encroaching trees, throwing rocks, digging postholes or privy holes, we had fun. We were making something better.

Chuck asked me to edit some early letters and informational materials even before the quaint RAF logo showed up. Way back when John McKenna had a mustache. I sent a few dollars in to HQ. An orange shirt arrived in my mailbox with a handwritten thank you. The custom of writing handwritten notes, by the way, has continued throughout the RAF’s 22 years. More work parties, an organizational workshop, a few lengthy public lands meetings, and passionate folks started showing up in their orange shirts, all giving their time to support the preservation of backcountry aviation, and I found inspiration.

Now with the ideal aircraft for my purposes, an old 182 with the Sportsman STOL, pursuing that inspiration is up to me, my skills, and sound PIC judgment. And thanks to the RAF and its partners, there are plenty of beautiful places to go. There are disappointments when the weather or summer wildfire smoke shuts out a destination, but a constant is always the fine folks who share the mission.

The RAF has added purpose to my flying. I’ve made lifetime friends, and seen places I’d have missed if not for the RAF and its successes. It feels good to leave a place better than you found it, and know that these special places will endure for others to enjoy.

Often folks refer to the RAF mission as a cross-country flight, a journey from Point A to B. But I see it more as an orbit, since it should have no end. I see a long and productive future for the RAF. The RAF is constantly in motion, but remains close enough to Earth to recognize its beauty and preserve our special way to access it.