I didn’t know what I was doing. I went to Hollywood to be a screen writer and had success. They were shipping us up to Alaska, the great wilderness that old men wanted to go to and consequently stayed away from. Why was I going there? I was letting the career do the talking or so I hoped. I went from large plane, to small plane, to even smaller plane. One guy looked like a bible salesman. I was surprised to see him reading Fredrick Nietzsche. A rock star was sitting next to me with a bible open. I guess the spiritually sick need God. The woman across from me was fine. Must’ve been a stunt double for the lead actress, but she didn’t talk.

I’m a nice enough guy, maybe a bit insecure, but I like conversation every once and awhile. I like to see who’s around me, but nobody was saying anything, so I pulled out my own book, Surviving the Outdoors. It seemed appropriate since I was headed for “The Bush.” It could get light and dark for 24 hours. It was an unnatural place seated in the heart of nature. Something curious; I’ve always liked to be prepared, though I was never a boy scout.

Our pilot was taking us between mountains where the air was insecure. We kept falling two or three feet. Then we dropped like a rock through a swarm of seagulls and the engines blew up. The girl’s eyes were rolling up inside her head; they’d done that before, I was sure. The bible salesman didn’t look like a superman. His head was between his legs. The Rockstar was praying out loud. And the pilot was dead or at least I thought so. There were guts on the windshield, but they could have belonged to the birds. I noticed the sky turning into green and brown; we were going to crash.