May 18

         He rested the chainsaw on his dirt caked jeans, startled by the growing darkness. Framed between the boughs of the Ponderosa Pines, he could no longer see the horizon even though the sun had just risen a few hours before. His sweaty forearm felt the prick of….rain? No, these specks falling from the sky did not dissolve into relief but instead smudged into the grime already there.

         His buddy had stopped too, soon after he felled the last tree. They both were alert now as the sky was turning into consuming blackness.

         They got into the old pickup truck, hastily tossing chainsaws into the bed, cranking the knob on the old radio. The crackling on the radio cleared and they could hear that which they already knew: that mountain had awoken fiercely! Yet then the announcer said that which alter my family forever: a cropduster plane was missing!

         Knowing the pilot was either his father-in-law or brother-in-law, my dad changed courses and barreled the truck towards my grandma’s house. And there he found his wife, long red hair tangled with the baby in the sling, vinegar tears spilling over onto my downy head. He learned what the family already knew, the man they adored, the one who had skipped school at 15 to take flying lessons, the one who started a flying business in a small Washington town, the one who would later be honored by the Washington Aviation Hall of Fame, lay crumpled in twisted metal in a farmer’s field.