He remembered a pilot telling him once, 'They pay us a hundred thousand dollars or more a year, Brian, and they really do it for just one reason. They know that in almost every pilot's career, there are thirty or forty seconds when he might actually make a difference. They pay us not to freeze when those seconds finally come.

We lived in and out of our flight bags, they being our true and only home. Thus, if we were not actually flying or sleeping, we were often lonely and at a loss to occupy ourselves.

I sit far back in my seat, my right foot braced comfortably against the instrument panel, listening to the steady thrumming of the engines, content to reflect that I have at least come a long way since my barnstorming days. Not so long ago, in a rock-fenced field nearby, a young man named Blauvelt stepped away from a sputtering biplane and first sent me into the sky alone.

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.

James Salter has been a fighter pilot, a rogue, and a climber. He counts Robert Redford as a friend.

The bridges are not broken, in aviation they must not be broken.