Distinctly Montana Magazine

49 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m F OR THOUSANDS OF YEARS, no person had seen Montana's mountains from above—how the trees resolve into green speckles on slate gray patched with blinding snow. Only birds had ever seen their own shadows cast, far below them, on the rooftop of that landscape. Human beings had to wait until the late 19th century when the pursuit of physics and engineering brought the dream of con- trolled flight almost within grasp. All over the world, engines, pedals, foils, and wings were combined in strange and unprec- edented ways, chimeric machines composed of odd parts. Most were death traps. Some achieved a degree of lift before go- ing nose-down into rivers and fields. Then Wilbur and Orville Wright cracked it in 1903. In 1910, the state of Montana had, of late, been the frontier. Now, as civilization encroached on all but the most secluded corners of Montana, the sky seemed to be the new frontier. Aviation was a brand new, wide-open territory—not unlike Montana herself. But the land of Montana was very different from the flat, san- dy terrain of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Her mountains were plenty arduous to cross from the ground, but her citizens had spent a hundred years or so figuring out the best ways to do that. For millennia, the art of traversing them from the air was theo- retical to all Montana's living creatures, save for birds. Now, only within the last few years, human beings could share that same, rarified view. Montana aviation historian Frank W. Wiley described an en- chanting scene: "You could fly...at 50 to 200 feet above the terrain, see a jack- rabbit burst out from behind a sagebrush, or a coyote give up the stalk on a rabbit, giving you a dirty look from yellow eyes before spinning his wheels to get away... You could check your drift with the smoke from a sheepherder's wagon as he cooked his breakfast, and see his sheep start to pile up on the bedground, too startled to move far before you were gone." Such beguiling scenes were the exclusive purview of a brave few willing to sit at the controls of a machine that was at best un- tested and, at worst, highly dangerous. In short, to be a pilot was inherently to be a daredevil. As Wiley relates, "In those days, three accidents in one week were about par for the course." by JOE SHELTON illustrations by ROBERT RATH

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