WHY FLY

Open skies.

At the age of 58, with her marriage ending, Paul, a former firefighter and author, became obsessed with flying a gyrocopter, which she describes as “a large rotor attached like a wide-brimmed hat to what looks like a go-kart.” She needs to get a special certification to fly the contraption, and she can fly only with a certain visibility and when she can maintain a prescribed distance from cloud cover. Although her flights are circumscribed, flying fulfills “that most human of needs, to feel a little in control, to step off the foundation that is crumbling under me onto something firmer.” Paul discusses the physics of flight; the difficulties that make takeoff and landing precarious; navigation strategies; and techniques pilots use for not getting lost, such as dead reckoning, pilotage, and, helpfully, GPS. Climate change, she reports, has affected piloting: Air turbulence has increased by 55 percent since 1979 and is predicted to triple by the end of the century. In response to birds’ changing habitats, scientists, conservationists, nature preserve volunteers, and pilots have established Operation Migration, which uses small aircraft to reintroduce endangered birds to migration patterns that they have lost. The author pays homage to women’s brave forays into the skies, singling out Black pilot Bessie Coleman, a contemporary of Amelia Earhart, overlooked by aviation historians. Though the memoir is threaded with a sense of loss, Paul has a light touch in contriving metaphors from flying. After love’s “heady feeling of promise” that feels much like a takeoff, she knows that for her and her wife, it’s time to land: “to bring the plane toward a gentle touchdown on a runway we have been circling, circling, for too long now.”

An engaging memoir of exhilaration and sadness.