By Steve Weaver

Continued from the January 2012 Issue

By the time I reached Pennsboro the ground was totally dark and now I was following the lights of moving cars that I fervently hoped were moving toward Parkersburg. Worse, I had no lights on the airplane and nothing to light the instrument panel, which at this point was a just a dark shape in front of my knees. I had never been in an airplane at night before, and as the visual cues that I had used in flying, without even thinking about them, slipped away one by one, I felt like a man being swept by swift waters to a waiting waterfall. The brassy taste of fear was in my mouth. 

The speed of the little airplane over the ground now seemed reduced to a snail’s pace, and the indistinct gloaming below passed ever so slowly. The sky, still with faint afterglow on the western horizon, had darkened above me and stars were beginning to appear. I kept trying to comprehend the fact that I was flying an airplane alone, through a night sky.