Longings

Longings

Orville Wright lay on his back amongst the sand dunes at Kittyhawk, staring up into the sky admiring the effortless flight of the sea gulls soaring over the dunes.

If only he could see what the birds saw. He’d been studying their flight for a long time now. He was beginning to understand the way in which the wind blowing over the tops of the dunes pushed the birds up into the sky. Little swirls of sand curling off the top of each ridge gave a clue as to the way the wind blew, but they appeared able to see the wind currents even when the breezes weren’t strong enough to blow the sand about.

It was almost as if the wind blew in the same sort of patterns as the waves in the sea. The bird would swoop up the surface of a wind wave and glide down the other side in much the same way as they did when low over the water.

There was so much to learn, yet they made flight seem so simple. His brother was finishing off the latest change in construction to their flying machine, maybe this time they could really join the birds.

It must be wonderful to soar around the sky just using similar instincts to those he possessed that enabled him to walk balancing on two feet. Just go where the whim took you and do what you wished.

----O----

Twenty or thirty feet above his head a seagull had been watching him most of the afternoon. Simple thoughts were going on in its small brain. Most importantly, ‘Am I in any danger?’ Then keeping a careful eye out for any sudden movements from the man below him, the bird wondered what it must be like to be a man.

Nothing ever attacked them, nor did they ever appear to feed. At night time the two humans that lived out here with the birds, would go inside the huge wooden nest they’d built and wouldn’t come out again until daylight.

Even stranger, every now and again they’d bring out a huge bird that was so tame it would let one of them climb onto its back. Then it would slide down a slope and stagger into the air for a few feet before landing with a heavy thump after a few seconds of very wobbly flight.

Quite often after one of these episodes, one of the men would come out of their nest and begin hitting the bird. The seagull supposed it must be a young tame bird that was being taught to fly, although hitting it didn’t seem to be helping it to learn very quickly. It was a huge thing like no other bird in the air. It was so big that perhaps it wasn’t able to fly properly and the men were being rather cruel to it.

The seagull headed off for its roosting site, keeping one anxious eye open for predators, while the other eye scanned the sea for fish. It would be rather nice to be a man and have no worries. Just lie in the sun most of the day and do what you wished.

----OOOO----