Everybody, Always

seriously and wouldn’t die. Our house wasn’t just a home anymore; it was
a Top Gun school. By the end of the year, Adam got a diploma, a pilot’s
license, and a leather jacket all in the space of a few days. He also got a
seaplane rating so he could fly my Beaver.
There are thousands of remote mountain lakes in British Columbia.
These emerald lakes are scattered everywhere, isolated between the steep
granite walls of the surrounding mountains. Whenever I fly over them, I
size them up and wonder if they would be big enough to land on.
For more than a decade, the boys and I had been eyeing one of these
lakes. It freezes solid each winter and is covered by ten feet of snow, but
by the end of the summer, the snow and ice melt away, leaving a jaw-
dropping alpine lake behind. The lake isn’t large. From the air, it looks
like it’s no more than a curbside puddle after a rainstorm. Each time we
would fly over the lake, we would nudge one another and wonder out loud
whether there was enough lake to land the Beaver—and if we did, would
there be enough room to get back out again?
The entry point for the Beaver is a tight squeeze between two
towering granite walls. If you make it through, the lake is at the bottom
of a two-thousand-foot ravine. Getting there requires an aggressive
descent. Each step requires total commitment because both the ravine and
the deep bowl containing the lake are too cramped to turn around
midway. Once you’re in, there’s no option but to land the plane and
prepare for a new takeoff going the other direction. It’s a round trip made
of two one-way tickets.
One day, Adam and I were flying the Beaver back from a grocery run
to town. As we passed over the lake, I looked over and asked, “What if we
land in the lake today?” Adam laughed it off nervously.
“No, I’m serious. Let’s do it!”
Adam stared at me for a long moment, wondering if I meant it. I took
that as a yes and dipped the wing toward the lake and we started
descending. The cockpit became charged with an intense mixture of fear
and excitement.