Soar Point

Alas, The Triplane Ain't My Plane

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

Last week, I was in Alaska for a few hours, taking the Top Of The World Highway back down into Canada and the Yukon. We pulled into Chicken, which is less than 40 miles from the border at Poker Creek, fo a quick lunch stop.

There I watched a man on a quad bike traverse a flat area near the picnic gazebo. Behind him on the bike he had three children, and one of them was flying this beautiful kite. Its bright colours caught my eyes, but I didn't immediately realise that the kite was in the shape of a World War I triplane.

It was so evocative of the Charles M. Schulz cartoons of Snoopy with his leather helmet, picturing himself as a World War I air ace, taking to the skies against the Red Baron.

Before I could approach the group to ask if the kite was home-made, the father left on the quad bike, blowing kisses and calling out "Love you" to the children.

Unfortunately, strangers can no longer approach children and strike up a conversation with them. But as they ran as fast as their legs would carry them, the kite bobbing up and down in the clear sky behind them, I was able to take these shots with my 300mm lens.

What I really wanted to tell them was to follow their dreams. To tell them that I was a kid once. To tell them that I used to fly kites. To tell them that I dreamed about becoming a novelist. To tell them that when I wrote my first novel, it would include a short but significant segment about a child flying a kite.

More than anything else, I wanted to tell the children in Chicken, Alaska, that dreams can come true, just as the human spirit can soar.

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