Peter M. Hunt's Blog, page 8

A friend if the strangest sort

Astros, Peloponnesus Peninsula, Greece, 1976.

Gently kicking face down on the surface, I breathe deeply from the plastic snorkel with disciplined practice while following the shadowy school of giant fish on the bottom. The water is clear, but the ninety-foot depth hosts a confusing array of thermoclines. These sharp drops in water temperature create subtle obscurations to visibility, wavy zones of disparate water densities.

My 14-year-old mind tries to process a plan for the impending free...

Several actual Amazon customer reviews of “The Lost Intruder, the Search for a Missing Navy Jet”

“Superlative writing that takes aviator adventure tales to a new level of existentialism. There are pain-filled episodes described that are indelible once read. However, the author found that his debilitations unexpectedly enhanced his inner life and perceptions of others. Very memorable and graciously instructive. This is a rare find.”

Kmag54           August 13, 2020

“I first heard about this story from an Air & Space article about “Christine” and the many gremlins this aircraft had....

Delightfully depressed

A few select songs incapacitate with their haunting beauty, stranding me in a netherworld of delightful depression, frozen in a timeless dimension of emotion. Lola, by the Kinks, has always been one of these songs for me. These compositions evoke a purity of joyful pain that overwhelms, losing me in a cathartic confusion of authenticity that I’ve only recently recognized as the sharing of unconditional love between unfamiliar souls.

This experience is not today’s fairy tale notion of romantic...

Preparing to land

Trying not to squirm in the 737’s exit row, I struggle to avoid bringing attention to my condition and risk losing the relative comfort of extra legroom. As I stare at the boarding passengers, no earth-shattering revelations pay visitation. Carefully reviewing the emergency exit card, I weigh the value of being a former airline pilot with emergency exit training with that of the average fully physically capable passenger.

If I am fortunate enough to travel solo again, the overarching lesson i...

Just like a big boy

Sleeping well, at least for my rapidly evolving standards, provides practical as well as emotional support, allowing me to walk without incident from the airport hotel to the check in counters. I wait in line, renewed confidence gradually calming my rapidly beating heart: I’ve done this hundreds of times, I remind myself; it sure as hell doesn’t feel like it.

With my main bag checked, I prepare mentally to transit security. I glance at my boarding pass for the departure gate, and my pulse rac...

Simple things

I sit on the plane, alive and aware, as the Parkinson’s courses through it’s cycles of mistrust, ceding disdain’s focused calm to the shadow game that surrounds.

No longer able to reliably drive, I took the three hour shuttle to Seatac Sunday afternoon, much as the rest of my life, consigned through unearned promotion the role of watcher, my sole interaction of purpose being writing to you in this connection of grace.

Unable—so far—to vanquish the fear stemming from attachment to this body...

My father

My father died several years ago at age 87 after a meaningful life. He lived overseas and traveled extensively, including a three-year stint in the navy as a ship’s navigator and many years teaching in Athens, Greece, and Damascus, Syria.

He volunteered tirelessly for civil rights, including marching—and getting arrested—at Selma. He exercised civil disobedience for racial justice many more times back home in New York, including more arrests and the occasional sleepless nights as he stood gua...

Enduring intentions

We are born free and bred into insecurity, bequeathed from ancestors an innate fear of being revealed as the scared little children we are, searching for our place in the world. We have learned instead to march to an unfamiliar beat, a role of rules and retribution.

We fight an internal battle, some with great secrecy, others gleefully open, to become who we are. Everyone’s path is different; we make individual decisions on which rules to ignore and which to incorporate into the belief system...

A child’s love

When five years old, I had a thing for Captain Crunch cereal; fortunately for me, my parents would rarely buy the sugar-laden garbage. Finally, sensing a fatigued mother one morning, I browbeat Mom until she relented to my pleas to allow me to go to the local supermarket to buy a box of Captain Crunch. My mother stayed home with my napping baby sister while monitoring my progress from a front window.

Mom instructed me to walk down our long, steep front driveway, look both ways, and only then ...

Contrived distortion

During a recent hike, I noticed a seal swimming near shore in the swift Deception Pass current. The seal appeared to be paralleling my course, swimming effortlessly into the current but only making marginal headway before transitioning to his version of backstroke and moving quickly with the water’s flow.

The seal was carefree and enjoying himself, playing like a child. What allowed the seal to ignore worries, not being concerned with his next meal or getting hit by a passing boat, not driven...