Helicopter in Berg Valley
Bad night of dreams. A wonderful nighttime adventure involving helicopters and danger in a sort of jungle setting. It took place in Cornelius Berg’s valley, just over the ridge from our property.
The family was all going to some interesting event up that side valley of Cornelius Berg’s — you know, up that driveway running west off Highway TT to reach the house where Berg’s mother lived. Linda and I were to meet them there by helicopter.
Linda and I first had to make our way on foot up Highway TT from Dutzow. It was only a couple of miles, but it was a black, rainy night and our progress was interrupted all along the way with wreckage and activity and danger of a vaguely military sort. It was like making your way through a war-torn country in Europe during one of the world wars, civilian life and military activity all entangled. We finally located our helicopter, stored behind an auto garage, and took off, with me flying and Linda still traveling below on foot. We were in touch by cel phone or radio or something and I was to guide her up the valley until she joined the family, and then guide them all, from my aerial vantage, to the special event we had come for.
It just went from hard to harder. I had to land a little way into the valley where a high school jamboree of some kind was taking place on a big playing field surrounded by grandstands — people and vehicles and vehicle headlights and sky-piercing spotlights everywhere. Don’t know why I had to land there. And it became very difficult to leave again. Descending, I could see the utility wires and set down between them. But when it was time to lift off I couldn’t seem to find an opening. The cab of the helicopter wasn’t designed for a pilot to see out the top and rear. I was craning my neck and peering but still couldn’t get a comprehensive view of what was overhead.
Again and again I would begin to rise, only to see cables in my path at the last second. The field was crisscrossed with power lines. I didn’t understand how the other pilots were able to navigate between them.
I was hovering along the ground, turning and tilting my chopper this way and that the way a man with a stiff neck turns his whole body to see things. It was putting the crowd in danger, but no one had the sense to know it. An area of very low power cables forced me to creep along just inches above the grass, and then the milling crowd forced me to set back down completely. The crowd was jostling my small helicopter sideways by piling against its sides, not out of malice but just because the crowd was so thick. The blades were coming very close to decapitating a whole group of special education students.
Bill and Dad found me there and climbed aboard. Bill took the controls and managed to lift off safely, dodging power lines. We proceeded up the valley and swooped down low, trying to locate Mom and the girls. We found ourselves in the same pickle as before, but worse. Now the problem was trees overhead. Bill piloted us along forest roads and from clearing to clearing, searching for a break in the canopy. We came into a grand clearing that had the look of an idle construction site. Parked construction equipment here and there, some felled trees and upturned stumps scattered across the dirt, some office trailers here and there enclosed in razor wire, scattered flood lamps illuminating this or that small area with a miserable kind of bug-befogged light. There were a few workmen or guards scattered about the large ground, moving with flashlights or having discussions around an idling vehicle. No one seemed concerned with our presence. It wasn’t a military operation we’d found, but some other kind of government one.
The cleared expanse should have given us our opening to achieve altitude again, but a better look showed us that the clearing was actually the bottom of a pit-like canyon. Sheer walls rose all around us, Andean in nature — steeply leaning cliffs faced densely with trees and vines. This part of Cornelius Berg’s valley was like a South American mountain jungle. Here at the west end of Berg’s valley floor stood the great attraction that was the reason for the work being done — a tower of yellow stone, built by ancient priests. Part Mayan and part Catholic, I happened to know — I had heard of the monument but never seen it until now. There were rumors of it being the subject of dubiously motivated government attention, like the moving of Egyptian architectural wonders for the building of the Aswan dam.
Our only concern at the moment was getting airborne and out of that mountain fastness so we could find Mom and the girls, who were still out there somewhere, making their way on foot through what we now understood was not just a simple Warren County side valley, but a secret jungle and the scene of suspicious government activities.
Bill saw his opening and piloted the helicopter straight up. There were large overhanging trees to avoid, but he had spotted all of them. What he did not spot was the large crane projecting from the top of one of the cliffs. “Oops,” my brother said as our rotor hit the steel arm of the crane, sending chips of propellor metal flying.
Did we crash, or continue on? If the dream was clear on this point, I don’t remember.
* * *
For some time after this I was half out of the dream, wrestling intellectually with the real-world puzzle of how anyone in real life can fly a helicopter in civilized areas. How are other pilots able to see what’s above them, especially above-and-behind them? Especially at night? And is it possible to sustain some damage to a helicopter’s propellor blades and continue flying?
Very uncomfortable and disturbing thoughts to have when trying to sleep, because the questions themselves seemed almost designed to thwart solution. I thought I wanted a solution because of my need to fly helicopters, but underneath that was the desire to solve this problem so I could move on to a pleasant dream and a more enjoyable sleep.
* * *
There are two major recurring elements in this dream. One is the idea of making my way homeward along Highway TT in the stretch between Dutzow and Quarry Hill. I think it is always a nighttime setting and always or most often the same kind of foot-journey through an occupied war zone as it was in this dream.
The other recurring element is the situation of flying a helicopter for the first or second time and having to avoid power lines. Often these flights begin in Marthasville and often I have Dad’s permission to fly — inexplicably, because I am always very unfit for flying these helicopters, or any other flying machine, for that matter, and always end up in danger, just as anyone should expect.
As far as I can remember I have never written about any of these dreams or thought about them after waking up. Only now do I see why the flying dreams have us living in Marthasville. I am conflating our family with the Stegner family! We are living in the part of Marthasville where their red house is perched dramatically on the edge of the high river bluff. Henry Stegner had a small airplane and was often seen on weekends and evenings circling around in the Warren County sky. In my helicopter (and sometimes an airplane?) dreams, I take off from my home at Stegner’s pinnacle and head eastward. Sometimes the sky is full of ominous clouds when I start, sometimes only when I am returning. There is always an emergency of some kind and it has to do with those uncannily dense clouds coming in. Sometimes I have to get a message to the people of Marthasville. Other times I simply have to get home safely. Always, as far as I can remember, there is great doubt that I will make it. My flying skills are too poor to make it home in one piece. I should never have gone flying, even though Dad thought I was ready to.
* * *
Finished at 10:42 in the morning. One hour to write that up, typing pretty steadily the whole time, very little editing, no rereading. Seems like an hour of typing would produce more words?
Later in day — those dreams of taking off flying from Stegner’s pinnacle are not the only ones I have about helicopter flight. I don’t think those are the ones that involve power lines. But there are certainly dreams in which I have to fly a helicopter but can’t get any altitude because there is always another power line to contend with.