{"id":39686,"date":"2011-08-10T06:50:13","date_gmt":"2011-08-10T10:50:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39686"},"modified":"2015-05-11T12:27:34","modified_gmt":"2015-05-11T16:27:34","slug":"the-books-north-to-the-orient-by-anne-morrow-lindbergh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=39686","title":{"rendered":"The Books: North to the Orient<\/i>, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Daily Book Excerpt: Memoirs<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Next book on the Memoir\/Letters\/Journals shelf is North to the Orient<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, by Anne Morrow Lindbergh<\/p>\n

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\nCharles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow married in 1929. He was already one of the most famous (and recognizable) men in the world due to flying the Atlantic in 1927. She was an innocent girl from an illustrious accomplished family who had just graduated college. Nothing in her life would prepare her for the reality of being married to Lindbergh: the danger of flying in those days, the peripatetic nature of his lifestyle, and also, the fame. She knew all that going in (as much as she could), and chose him anyway. It was an adventure. They honeymooned on a battered old boat, where no one could get to them. They lived in makeshift rental houses. They traveled extensively. She learned to fly. She also learned radio operation. They had their first son, Charles (who would be kidnapped and murdered), and soon afterwards, Charles and Anne took off on a flight over the North Pole to the Orient. Charles was surveying the vast area for possible landing strips, and also promoting the freedom of air flight to a population that had barely gotten used to the idea. The two left their baby son with Anne’s mother, and took off.<\/p>\n

It was dangerous work. They were literally in the middle of nowhere. There was no one to rescue them if they went down. <\/p>\n

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was a writer, as well, although up until that point she had just kept a private journal (5 volumes of which were eventually published). Her journal entries continued through the Orient trip, and somewhere along the way, with her newfound fame, she thought of turning the experience into a book. <\/p>\n

In 1935 North to the Orient<\/i> was published. <\/p>\n

Antoine de Saint-Exup\u00e9ry, perhaps the most famous “aviation writer” there is, admired her books on flying, and even wrote an introduction to one of them. North to the Orient<\/i> is a classic in that small genre of flying books. Not only is it a fascinating look at the early days of aviation, but Morrow Lindbergh’s prose – describing the disorienting beauty of flight – is memorable and poetic. She doesn’t quite match Saint-Exup\u00e9ry’s Wind, Sand and Stars<\/i>, but she comes close. At that time, it was still inconceivable to most of the population that you could actually get high enough in the air that you could see the curve of the earth, or you could see for miles and miles. It was magical, new territory, frightening and vast. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s writing reflects that. She is not “over” flight. She still hasn’t gotten used to it. That shows in her transcendent exhilarated writing.<\/p>\n

The book is a great mix of practical situations, problem-solving, and poetic fancy. <\/p>\n

Here, she describes the flight to Aklavik, a tiny hamlet far up in the Northwest Territories in Canada. <\/p>\n

Excerpt from North to the Orient<\/a>\"\"<\/i><\/big><\/p>\n

Our first sight of the Mackenzie delta was twelve hours before. We had flown all night from Baker Lake. It never grew dark. For hours I watched a motionless sun set in a motionless cloud-bank. For hours we skirted that gray, treeless coast, stretches on stretches of bleak land scattered with icy lakes. Always the same. Until I wondered, in spite of the vibration of the engine which hummed up through the soles of my feet, whether we were not motionless too. Were we caught, frozen into some timeless eternity there in the North? The world beneath had no reality that could be recognized, measured, and passed over. I knew that the white cloud-bank out to sea hung over the ice pack – that it marked, like the fiery ring around an enchanted castle, the outer circle of a frozen kingdom we could not enter. I knew from my husband’s chart, handed back from time to time, that we followed the shore of Canada along Amundsen Gulf to the Beaufort Sea. At one time we crossed a gray arm of coast which he pointed out as a tip of Victoria Island. “Victoria Island” – one of those pale pink lands which float off the top of the map – no, I could not believe it.<\/p>\n

In the middle of the night I tried to break the unreality by getting in touch with some radio station. It was late, but Coppermine, a trading post a hundred miles south, might be listening for us. I sent out our position: “Over – – – Cape – – – Crocker – – – north – – – of – – – Bathurst – – – inlet – – – 3:45 GCT (Greenwich civil time) – – – Lindbergh.” Would anyone believe us! Recklessly, I even sent out a message on short wave to the station at North Beach near New York. It was ten forty-five in the evening in New York. No sound, no reply to my message, but through the ear-phones I could hear dimly some big station’s unintelligible rattle. Perhaps Edmonton – perhaps Chicago or New York. Perhaps even, over the top of the world, Japan or China. I sat back and closed my eyes to the gray wastes below me, those fields of the moon. An exile on another planet, I listened to the far-off chatter of the world.<\/p>\n

Finally the sun set. Caught just below the horizon, it continued to light the sky with a strange green glow, like that from a partial eclipse. We turned our backs on it and set our course southwest toward Aklavik. The land stretched out dark ahead of us.<\/p>\n

We were both quite sleepy as we turned this corner of the flight. My husband, who had done all the flying, gave me the controls while he slept for short periods of a few minutes. Then he would fly again while I slept. During one of these naps I was jerked awake. Splutter – putt, putt, putt. The engine stopped. The nose of the ship dropped. We swayed forward. I could see my husband bent over the gas valves. Then the comforting splutter, splutter of the engine picking up again. One of the pontoon tanks had run dry. That was all. But I was stark awake by this time and wondering where we would land if the motor failed. I had been flying by compass and by that indistinct line, like the dregs of a wine bottle, that meant the horizon. Now I looked down at the ground below.<\/p>\n

There, spread out for miles ahead, like so much tangled silver thread, were the meandering channels and watercourses worn by the Mackenzie River on the last slow lap of its journey to the Beaufort Sea. So many and so tortuous were the streams which made up this mammoth delta that I wondered how we would ever find the right bend in the right river, and Aklavik. Each circling stream had about the same course, the same number of tributary streams, some desultory and half choked with mud, others completely stopped at one end, making half-moon lakes – silver sickles of water.<\/p>\n

As we came down lower and skimmed over the surface of one stream, we could not see across to another, for the banks were pine-covered. A strange sight in this treeless land, as though the great army of firs which had started out to accompany the Mackenzie River only a short distance had decided not to abandon her completely until she had safely reached the end of her journey, and had marched by her side even into this barren land, a think phalanx of green.<\/p>\n

It was three o’clock in the morning when we finally found the settlement – a big settlement for the North, about twenty or thirty houses, two churches, radio masts, and even another plane pulled up on the bank. At this hour it was so light that people ran out of their bungalows with cameras to take pictures.<\/p>\n

As the roar of the motor died we heard for the first time that sound peculiar to the North, a bedlam of howling dogs. The term “howling dogs” suggests back yards. This was the cry of a wild animal. And yet it was essentially the cry of resentment against the intruder – a strange bird which, roaring down the river, had broken the silence of their white night.<\/p>\n