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Authors: Thomas LaCorte
6 Miles With Courage
6 Miles With Courage
By Thomas G. LaCorte
Copyright © 2013 by Thomas G LaCorte, all rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my late father Fortunato Peter LaCorte the greatest story teller of them all.
192
6 - 2012
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge my wife Colleen whom has always given to me her full love and support in all that I do, my mother, and all of my children, T.G., Jessica, Joey, and especially Jeremy and his wife Brittany for helping with the content and review. I also would like to acknowledge my friend Marie St. John for her encouragement and enthusiasm, Heather Henderson for all her encouragement and advice, and Mark Leach of Digitaarts.com. Without their help and devotion this book would not have been possible. A special thanks to all of the Professional Land Surveyors whom I have had the privilege of working with over the past forty years, and I thank God for all of those above.
Disclaimer
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
.
Table of Contents
Every morning before the sun comes up, all across this great state of Florida, men and women alike are preparing for a day’s work in the swamp. The old and the young, the experienced and the not so experienced, these are the modern day explorers that you hear nothing about. These are the Land Surveyors and Mappers that prepare the maps. Maps that in this day and age
are used more for land conservation than for anything else.
Rob Sykes is such
a land surveyor. He has spent forty years of his life exploring and mapping the Florida wilderness. Putting on his waders, placing his lunch in his hat, and grabbing a machete, he has spent many a long day and even a few nights in the cypress swamps and river basins of Florida. He is a well-seasoned professional and wouldn’t trade his job for any other job in the world!
His
experience allows him to ghost gracefully through the swamp with enjoyment and much ease, his mind on the wonderment and beauty of it all. And while the newbie or “greenhorn” is struggling in waist deep mud, cussing his very existence, mere inches away is Rob, standing in ankle deep water with dry boots! It all comes from experience.
Rob’s son Ryan has no such experience. Ryan has heard many tales from his father through the years. Swamp tales of spiders, snakes and alligators.
Tales that would curl Ryan’s hair and send shivers up his spine. Ryan has no interest in land surveying or any interest in spending a day in the swamp. Ryan wants to be a pilot when he finishes high school and has become quite an accomplished model-airplane and simulator pilot.
Rob
has an interest in aviation as well. He has already received his pilot’s license and has just purchased a small plane to help him scout his future survey projects. It’s this common bond that finds Rob and Ryan planning to share a long needed day together.
What they didn’t
plan
for is that Ryan was about to be thrown deep inside his father’s world of land surveying. Six miles deep into the swamp.
How will he find the courage to go six miles
alone?
Or is he
truly alone!
“I will meet you at Brown’s Airfield Monday morning at eleven o’clock sharp,” Rob Sykes a Professional Land Surveyor tells his son. “Don’t be late! We have a full day of flying ahead of us.”
“I
will
be on time,” promised Ryan. They live just a short drive from the little grass airstrip that is located in Zellwood, a quaint town in central Florida.
Ryan is true to his word. They meet as planned
. The weather is gorgeous—a deep blue sky—the first crisp autumn air has blown in from the north.
Tomorrow is Ryan’s eighteenth birthday
and Rob will be tied up with business so they take the opportunity today to spend some time together. It’s an early birthday present for the both of them.
After fueling up the
airplane, Ryan’s dad makes a last-minute jog back to his truck to grab a duffel bag and lockup their cellphones in the glove box. They won’t be using them during the flight.
After a
run-down of the preflight checklist they rumble down the grassy airstrip, take off, and with a turn to the north they’re off into-the-blue.
This
is Ryan’s first plane ride with his dad. Well actually this is his first plane ride period and as with anybody’s first plane ride there is a sense of awe and wonderment. The plane is his father’s which he had just purchased for business use. His father recently received his private pilot’s license and this is his first chance to take Ryan up. The plane is an older model of the high-wing, single-engine type. The high wing makes it easy to take-in the beauty below.
When you’re
high above the Florida landscape everything below looks like a toy. The trees have the appearance of the little ones that you buy at hobby shops for model train sets.
Ryan put his thumb up to the window. It completely covered a boat that was following the curves of the river some two thousand feet below.
“
What are you doing?” Ryan heard through the head set. Turning towards his father he replied, “What do you mean?”
“
I mean that thing with your thumb, what are you doing with your thumb?” his dad asked.
“Oh
, nothing,” Ryan said, turning back to watch the world below.
“Where are we?”
Ryan asked, leaning in a little closer to his dad.
“Does it matter?
Look around you son we are free from the bonds of the earth.” Ryan liked it when his dad called him son.
I
t was true, they were indeed free. Free to soar where the eagles fly and free to climb the endless halls of the sky. Free to dance among white puffy clouds, free from school, free from chores, well they were just plain
free
. It is a feeling like none other.
The experience of flying
is thrilling in itself, but the fact that he had some alone-time with his dad made it all the more magical.
It wasn’t that he did not like spending time with his mom
, or his brother, or even his sister. He loved them all dearly. With dad having his own business it meant that for the most part he worked six days a week. Then there was church on Sundays and with what little time his dad had for the weekend, well it seemed he wanted to spend it with everybody. “One-on-one” time with dad was rare.
R
yan did not know exactly where they were but he did know that they were somewhere over the Ocala National Forest and the Oklawaha River. His father had just completed a survey of the river below. They are now going to scope-out a new project to the north but the destination does not matter to Ryan.
“Do you want to get a closer look
at what’s below?” his dad asked.
“Sure let’s do it
!” Ryan said.
R
ob throttled-back the engine and made a slow descending turn towards the river below. Ryan seeing only sky and clouds patiently waited for the plane to level out. When the river
again appeared in his window it had a much different look. The river was wider and the trees were bigger. Ryan noticed that they were only several hundred feet above the wilderness.
“Do you see that bend in the river?” Ryan’s dad asked
.
“Yes I
see it,” Ryan said.
“T
hat’s where we
almost
swamped the boat in a thunderstorm during the survey. It came upon us fast, and we tried to make it to Highway 19.”
“
Where
is
Highway 19?” Ryan asked.
“It’s over there to the west
.” Rob said pointing out the windshield.
But looking towards the west Ryan s
ees only swamp. “I don’t see anything,” he said.
“I’ll take us back up
and give you a look.”
It was a nice feeling for Ryan’s dad to be engaging in a real conversation with his son.
When you’re at the age of fifty-four, seventeen-year olds are just plain hard to talk to. When Ryan was younger he would seek the answer to life’s questions from his dad. When adolescence arrived dad’s answers were outdated. Ryan’s father hoped that his next step—the step into adulthood—would bring back the old
connection
they once shared.
Ryan’s father
eased the throttle forward and the one hundred and eighty horsepower engine sprang back to life with a roar. Ryan felt the plane lifting up. Watching out the window the trees began to shrink.
BANG!
The loud noise came without a warning. It was followed by a violent shuddering of the aircraft. Ryan had his seat belt on but he is still thrown from left to right. This motion lasted only a second but it seemed much longer. He looked over at his father to find him with a sense of bewilderment on his face.
Eyebrows narrow
ed, leaning forward, his father is staring at the windshield. He reaches out to rub something off of it but it’s on the outside. It’s oil!
Ryan notice
s large spots of oil rippling across his side of the windshield too, and there is something else sticking out of the front of the airplane that he had not noticed before. It is a long metal object with a painted tip. It’s the propeller! And it has stopped still!
Now
, for the first time since taking-off there is no deafening engine noise. There is only the sound of the rushing wind.
Ryan
doesn’t know much about airplane engines but he knows this. Something terrible has gone wrong.
He
looks back at his father. He wanted to say something but he could not find any words so he just watches him. He watches him not with a sense of panic or even apprehension. He watches him as he has for so many years, with a sense of pride and confidence.
They
’re in
big
trouble, and Ryan has no clue that he is about to experience the ride of his life.