My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home.

And like no other sculpture in the history of art, the dead engine and dead airframe come to life at the touch of a human hand, and join their life with the pilot's own.

Finally I came to think that may be everything we need to know,ever,about anything,is already within us,waiting till we call for it.

We reviewed the ways we had to bring customers: Method A, flying aerobatics at the edge of town. Method B, the parachute jump. Then we began experimenting with Method C. There is a principle that says if you lay out a lonely solitaire game in the center of the wilderness, someone will soon come along to look over your shoulder and tell you how to play your cards. This was the principle of Method C. We unrolled our sleeping bags and stretched out under the wing, completely uncaring.

For most gulls it was not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight.

Why fly? Simple. I'm not happy unless there's some room between me and the ground.

Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again