A ROOM OF OUR OWN

...These settlements were surrounded with stockades, and among many of them were tall poles reaching up 50 or 75 feet...

...Some distance from where I am stationed one comes to the beginnings of a great mountain range...

...Don't think that I have any idea I am headed for a pilot's license...

...Even with his years and years of experience he does not trust his memory for the basic check-up that he makes before taking off...

...I feel that I have not gotten over to you the experiences of the day, and I would like so much to give them to you...

...Until now (perhaps with new air methods it may change) ingress and egress would be prohibitive except in terms of long, long years of slow migration...

...Remember our pal on the trip to Haiti—the old chap who started out as a small lad to go to sea, and all the experiences he had...

...I groaned...

...Stretching out across this great valley from end to end and some distance up the sides of the bowl is the highest type of agricultural cultivation one can see in thousands of miles...

...As we came down across the valley at low level we could see farmers tilling and cultivating, but all having a long spear handy in case of attack, and as the plane approached they would scoot for their huts and compounds like scared rabbits...

...We thus got an excellent view...

...Flying is hazardous, planes are dangerous, and that is why it gives one such satisfaction to see a master like Dinty methodically and meticulously take infinite pains in everything he does...

...And in diagnosing the weather, being able to tell what one kind of cloud will do to one's plane if one passes through it, and knowing when it's safe to proceed and when not to risk it, all that comes only with experience...

...This valley or bowl must be 75 miles long and 20 to 30 miles wide...

...Gradually at first, then more rapidly, one sees the hills grow into mountains, and then the mountains grow into towering peaks...

...And from what one can see from the air they look spotlessly clean and orderly—or rather, they arˆ perfectly orderly and from that one concludes they mus1 be clean...

...TODAY I went on an air trip...

...I am doubtful whether I should send this sketchy, wandering letter, but guess I shall, trusting that you will somehow or other make some sort of sense out of it...

...He never takes an unnecessary chance, but he would (as I have no doubt whatever he has many times in the past) face up to any kind of risk required by the necessities of the situation...

...what to say...

...One gets it in Wind, Sand, and Starx, in Anne Lindbergh's The Steep Ascent, and also in Flight to Arras...

...Here in this valley live a people who so far as is known have never had contact with the white man...

...He has his 'check-list' of vital things, and goes over them one by one and checks them off his list...

...But it has its magnificent sides too...

...Phil writes: "When I got back tonight I found your letter with the news that Bob had got his 'greetings' from the draft board...

...The worth-whileness of keeping up the Christmas tradition and "spirit" for the men who are scattered to the far corners of the earth...

...When he has checked every last detail, then and then alone is he ready for his take-off...

...It gave me a thrill very much like Christoph's Citadel, except that here one was conscious that the whole of this magnificent effort was constructive...

...While it will take one down into the heat and squalor and filth of the depths, it can also take one up into the heights above, where one's vision, one's senses of sight, hearing, and even more a sort of blend of all the senses, soar into something new and higher and keener than one has ever known before...

...And for all the thousands of air miles I have travelled out here, it is still a thrill to sit in the cockpit of a modern airplane, with a vast panorama of mountains, valleys, and clouds sweeping before one's eyes as the plane speeds its way through the air...

...AS I wrestled with myself, the postman brought me a letter from Phil on the other side of the world, a letter which shook me out of myself and changed the whole tenor of my thoughts...

...Few things are harder to take than prolonged waiting and uncertainty...

...IREGRET I haven't the facility to describe all this in an orderly and precise manner that would convey to you the intense interest that all this stirred in everyone of us on the air trip...

...The valley itself is some five or six thousand feet above sea level and is completely surrounded by a high, palisade-like, wall of sheer rock...

...THIS letter has drawn out to prodigious lengths and yet it is most inadequate...

...One gets a thrill —the sense of the power of the engines, and the ease and facility with which one turns, swings, rises, and falls as one works the rudder, and the wheel (or 'stick') that controls rising and falling and (with the rudders) banks to the left or right...

...While there is no comfort to my kind of mind in retreating to a world of "As You Like It," still one must clasp firmly the values that make life worth living...

...But alongside all this marvelous cultivation one saw the signs of the predatory nature of man...

...This is not known because people have visited this area—it is the inevitable conclusion one comes to from just what can be seen with the naked eye...

...A Room Of Our Own By Isabel B. La Follette AS with most of us, I have approached the thought of this Christmas with trepidation—Phil in the Southwest Pacific, our boy a private in an Arkansas infantry camp, and the most depressing news from abroad and here on the "home front...

...In all that side of it I am sure Bob will find a relief from standing around on one foot waiting, waiting to be called...

...ASI suppose you know, weather is one of the great- est if not the greatest danger in flying...

...As I have said, it is completely surrounded, and, so far as one can see, there is no inlet or outlet except up the precipitous and tortuous sides of the palisades that surround it...

...And so I hope that in some small measure I have gotten over to you that the time ahead for Bob need not be wasted, that it can be enriching...

...I wish that I had real gifts of description...

...While I don't expect nor desire Bob to become a pilot, I would like him to acquire out of this experience in the Army (since have it he must) the most possible from it...

...The importance of today's children getting their opportunity for a normal experience...

...I should say the sides of the bowl must be about two or three thousand feet...

...I besought myself...

...Finally one swings over a great mountain range, makes a sharp turn, and suddenly below is a wide-spread valley...

...As one looks up at the sides of the valley and on up to the clouds, one sees rising all around the highest peaks in this vast area...

...Some of the peaks are snowcapped even here in the tropics and must rise up 16,000 or 17,000 feet...

...But I think too it will be a relief if he can be started on his way to something more or less definite...

...This valley is inhabited by the most advanced—by far—of any tribe in New Guinea...

...If one were forced down in this region, he would have to adjust himself to spending the remainder of his days...

...If there's anyone who should be adjusted to the world ahead of him, capable of taking its best and worst in his stride, it's that lad...

...There are also some cattle of sorts...

...Dinty Street has all those qualities and has learned them from the same unequalled teacher, Nature...

...This business has its drab, boring, frustrating, terrifying, trying sides that make one ache with fatigue, groan with irritation, crab with petty annoyances, and boil over with a sense of wasted time...

...Whatever can 1 say in a Christmas column this year...

...Dinty has some 11,000 hours of flying (in 16 years) and interestingly enough he believes (as do others) that what one loses in speed of reflex action as one grows older, is made up and more by experience and the knowledge gained by experience...

...As I have seen more and more of Dinty I have been increasingly impressed with the basic similarity between training and experience that comes with the air and with going to sea...

...Not just to write them down, nor just so you could know what I am doing, but because in a way perhaps it would give you a sense of some of the things Bob III should get from his experiences ahead of him...

...Report has it that these rich settlements are subject to raids by less fortunately situated natives...

...And every wracked father, mother, and wife will take comfort from the closeness in thought and understanding of our personal pain on their behalf here at home from one who has been "going through the mill" for nearly three years...

...Although my faith in life's rich possibilities holds fast, it is tough going in the face of today's world...

...The valley itself is bathed in brilliant sunshine with a thin scattering of clouds moving slowly across the sky...

...He owes it in no small measure to the extraordinary training and teaching that you have given him...

...I am not trying to 'sell you a bill of goods.' I know it will be plenty tough for you to have him leave...

...These natives have been 'strip-farming' or contour-farming apparently for ages, which we have comparatively only recently discovered as a method of preserving the fertility of our soil...

...But once in, one always (or nearly always) has plenty of company in the process...

...On top of the poles was a sort of chair where the observer for the village or settlement could keep a sharp lookout for enemies...

...I have no doubt he found it a real relief...

...The valley is plentifully supplied with water, and the whole floor of the valley—and even up the sides—is in a high degree of cultivation...

...We came down very close to the level of the valley, flew as close as a couple of hundred feet from the ground...

...Describe eight-year-old Sherry's insistence on re-tracing every single detail as "we have always done...

...Whether it is lining up for the issue of GI clothing, waiting for medical examinations, standing in line for chow, one is always surrounded by fellow 'sufferers' who share in the complaints and get a real kick out of each other's growls...

...MAY another Christmas see an end to the horrors of war, and the release of man's magnificent powers to the building of a decent, generous world for all...

...It is not easy to be sure of what is planted, but among others it was possible to distinguish rice paddies, what-looked-like tobacco, some types of grain, forage, and what were obviously fruit trees and vegetable gardens...

...Scattered over the valley are hundreds of small settlements...

...Each one is a cluster of 10 to 20 buildings, all with thatched roofs, some round (unique I'm told in New Guinea) and all are laid out with geometrical precision...

...I couldn't help thinking what terror an apparition like an airplane swooping down out of the sky with a terrific roar must instill in their hearts and minds...

...Shall I describe my effort to avoid the aching gap in the family by changing our Christmas customs...

...Why, I said wonderingly to myself, what better Christmas message could I share with the families of men in the service than the challenge Phil presents to the boys and to us...

...It was really fun only because Dinty Street was right there with his superlatively sure touch and flying genius that is the marvel of anyone and everyone who knows anything about flying...

...Of course, he'll get a real dose of that sort of 'hurry up and wait' business in the Army...