‘Fairway to Heaven’, A simple day in Florida

Builders; 

I live on a little grass airstrip in rural Florida. 102 other people also live here, we all contribute to the upkeep and operation of our little home. This year, I’m serving another tour as airport manager. I like the job, it is all done outside in the sunshine. Running our place is a whole community effort, ongoing for decades. If being here didn’t  restore someones optimism about people, not much else would. 

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On a day were many millions of people in America succumbed to media and corporate pressure to feel fear and react emotionally, I chose to turn all that stuff off and go spend some time outside.  I am deeply bothered that the America of my ideals, the “Home of the Brave”, is not easily seen in our national behavior on this day.  Rather than dwell on something I can not effect, I went outside to do something productive on the runway. 

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In front of my hangar, I load sacks of fertilizer into the hopper. I picked up 2,000 pounds of it in my old truck. Phil Maxson’s Zenith 601XL is between my truck and the hangar. What do the machines have in common? They are all the simplest way to accomplish the tasks they so. They make bigger tractors with automatic transmissions, Far nicer trucks run by computers, and much higher tech aircraft engines. But I honestly have to say that simplicity has served me far better in life. At age 57, I have gotten quite particular about seeking out the least complex, most peaceful , easiest to maintain things in life. I intentional live in a very quiet setting, and from there I lead my life as who I am, not as a reaction to the constant onslaught of consumerism, complexity and conflict that invade most peoples lives. There are costs for this, but I personally find them small. On this day, watching how my fellow countrymen reacted to the days news, I felt insulated from the stress most people swallowed today.

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This turtle, about the size of a tennis ball, was taking a little stroll down the road to my house. There was little danger he would get hurt, often many hours pass between vehicles on my road.  You may have passed a wild turtle today, but were not walking in a peaceful setting, and you didn’t get to see them. There are many rewards and obligations people feel that keep them very busy. I understand this. I personally am not well equipped to digest stress of the daily sort, and if I could, I might never have found the setting I live in. My only point to share is that given the choice, perhaps any shift toward the simpler options in life would serve your sanity as well. My work involves showing people the simplest method to go flying, and how to be the master of this, not merely its owner. Your life, your choice, but for me, simplicity is sanity.

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Little guy with a long way to go. Didn’t seem to bother him, it was nice out and as an animal, he has no other option than to live in the moment. I watched him for a while and thought about how I wasted a lot of my life as a self-made exercise in stress and conflict.  Why was it important? I like to know, and then I might have some reason that I spent a lot of my life doing things that brought me little happiness.  I was sent links today, to a heated internet debate about alternative engines. There was a time I would have felt a very strong compulsion to express something there, but I read the comments, and it was very obvious that no one was learning anything or changing their opinions. I watched another engine provider I know personally, get very frustrated explaining a point he was correct on. I watched and couldn’t quite remember why I once would have typed an effectively identical essay to an equally closed minded people. I shut the laptop and went back out to the tractor.

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