It had been a beautiful, sunny day. My goal had been to fly from Flint Bishop Airport to the small airport in Sandusky, Michigan, a short trip of less than two hundred miles. It was my last required cross country flight before testing for my pilot’s license and I was anxious to finish. The last year had been spent ticking off the many requirements necessary to become a pilot and for a woman who sometimes found driving a car challenging, it had been a real struggle.

As I listened to the reassuring hum of the engine and gazed at the Michigan farmland below a slight, foggy mist wafted across the landscape. What? I had checked the weather several times before taking off….sunny and clear all day. It couldn’t possibility be anything.  Storms don’t come that suddenly, do they? I thought immediately of turning around and flying back to Flint. I had only been in the air ten minutes…it wouldn’t take long….but…then I would have to repeat the whole process and it would delay getting my license another few weeks. I decided to go a bit further.  I should have plenty of time to fly to Sandusky, land, get the required signatures from airport staff there, then return to Flint with no problem.

But, if I was wrong, it was crash and burn.  My biggest fear in flying was in being lost, aimlessly flying around unable to find an airport, landing on a highway or in a cornfield if I was lucky.  I decided to fly a little longer before deciding on a course of action.  Maybe I was just looking for a problem.  I radioed the control tower at Flint and mentioned what I was seeing and asked if other pilots  had reported it.  Other pilots had reported seeing the mist.

As I flew on the foggy looking mist didn’t go away, it seemed to be increasing.  I made my decision,   “Flint tower, Cessna 1327 is returning to the airport.”  It was a decision I did not want to make but I knew, with flying, a wrong decision can make you dead wrong.  By the time I arrived back at Flint the airport was an hour away from being closed for VFR pilots.  My instructor was nervously pacing back and forth in front of the hangars when I taxied in….the relief on his face was evident  when he stated….” You made the right decision , there’s a forest fire in Canada causing all of that smoke….you wouldn’t have been able to see in another hour.

As I thought about my decision to fly back to Flint that day I thought about all decisions that we make in life.  I chose to go back to the airport because I could see imminent death approaching…maybe if all decisions we made carried this threat we would make better ones.  A lot of the decisions do carry the threat of death, but we don’t  realize it at the time.  We start smoking at a young age, get fat, fail to exercise and shorten our life but we never realize that those decisions will actually affect us.  We worry about flying, or terrorism, or tornados when the odds are pretty good that they will never actually threaten our lives. Some of the decisions we make don’t threaten our lives but certainly affect the way we live it.  The education we choose to pursue, the person we marry, and the people we choose as friends affect our lives much more than we realize at the time.

Flying back to the airport that day did increase the time that it took me to get my pilot’s license.As much as I hated that delay it made me feel much  more confident to make decisions. I got my pilot’s license and later my helicopter rating…. and am still alive to talk about my experiences.