Mariana Gosnell (1932–2012)

Mariana Gosnell takes the reader along on her extraordinary voyage across the U.S. in her single-engine Luscombe Silvaire, Zero Three Bravo. Enticed by the ribbon of sky that she could see from her Manhattan office window, she took a leave of absence from her job and made a three-month solo flight, navigating by use of landmarks and landing in America's little-known, back-country airports. She traveled south from her home airport of Spring Valley, New York, down to North Carolina and Georgia, west across Texas to Los Angeles and north to San Francisco, and then east over the Rockies, the plains, and the farms of the Midwest until she was back home.
What results is a lyrical description of land, sky, and water interwoven with experiences among small-town folks, maverick crop-dusters, banner towers, mechanics, and airport loiterers. With each landing there is a story to be told: the deaf-mute pilot who grounded himself until the eggs in the bird's nest lodged in his plane's engine had hatched, the woman running an airport by herself after losing both her husband and son to flying accidents, and the pilots and "hangar bums" who tried to hide their surprise when they saw a woman pilot flying cross-country solo.… (plus d'informations)

The most difficult part of writing this review is avoiding the deluge of ice puns that could result. So instead of saying that Ice is a cool book, we could say that Ice by Mariana Gosnell covers an interesting subject. Since I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I am somewhat familiar with the phenomenon known as ice. Going into this work, I knew that ice floats since it is less dense than water, I knew that this was a very good thing, and I knew that ice was refreshing in beverages. While I am not exactly stupid, I do admit that ice is something that I never really gave much thought to. I even knew that ice could be dangerous; practically everyone has heard of the Titanic disaster and how an iceberg sheared a hole through steel plates.

Gosnell delves deep into the science of ice by providing information gleaned from a wide swath of disciplines. So she talks about the actual structure of ice, the method and conditions of how it forms, the little names that people have for different forms of ice, and little tidbits of how ice is useful or terrifying. Take this, for example, I never thought about rivers freezing over, but it happens. I guess I thought that the flow of water would impede it or something, but that doesn’t stop the freezing process. In fact, it goes on to carry the ice downstream, sometimes creating massive floods if the ice blocks a pipe.

This book leaves no stone unturned in talking about ice in all of its glory. From frozen lakes and rivers to massive glaciers and mountains, ice can be found in many places. It can even be useful in finding out about atmospheric changes. If you take a coring of ice and analyze it, it is possible to find out many things about the period when that ice froze. Alongside all of this information are little asides from poems, plays, and novels on the beauty and power of ice. That is my one problem with this book though. It seems like the little creative pieces on ice would work to separate paragraphs or ideas, but that doesn’t exactly happen. The book finishes a paragraph, moves on to a quote by Shakespeare that pertains to ice, and moves on to the same chain of thought with a new paragraph. A lot of works have dealt with ice, which isn’t really surprising.

So in the sense of being informative, the book is great. It is quite exhaustive and the stories it tells are interesting in their own right. Some of the stories are pretty sad, but that is what you get for underestimating Mother Nature. I recall that short story by Jack London, To Build a Fire. In the face of incredible cold and the danger of the Alaskan wilderness, the man is referred to as a nameless agent. He is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, and when he tries to overdo it he dies nameless and faceless. All in all, I would rate this book pretty highly.… (plus d'informations)

I loved Zero Three Bravo right from the start. I tried to read it slowly, knowing that I would be sad when it ended. 03B is all about the author's trip, in the 1970s, in her Luscombe airplane across the US, stopping almost exclusively at small, non-towered airports. The author is somewhat of a hero to me now, because that is very similar to a goal of mine once I get my license and an airplane of my own. We've actually both flown in and out of SAF airport, the only towered airport on her long trip. This book was recommended to me by a flight instructor who knew that I was interested in traveling all over the place once I'm able. I'm so glad that he suggested it.

Mariana captures the essence of all aspects of her trip. The airports, good and bad landings, weather, other pilots, FBOs, sleeping under her airplane's wings, food, wildlife, being a woman pilot, etc. It was definitely a different time then, and many of the interesting people she met were already relics over 30 years ago. So this isn't necessarily a trip that any of us could recapture these days. But still, you get a flavor of general aviation, small towns, and life back then.

I highly recommend this book to anybody interested in general aviation, whether you're a pilot, interested in becoming a pilot, or just interested in looking through a window to the small towns of the past.… (plus d'informations)

Sort of a Blue Highways of the Sky. Gosnell has a passion for flying, especially in small, single engine planes into uncontrolled airports. She describes the myriad of interesting characters she meets along the way, each with a unique story to tell, and she retells them well.

She learned to fly in Africa where she and a friend had gone for several months. Since the only way to get around is by small plane, she was once flown from hither to yon in a small Cessna and a young woman pilot. Together they swooped down low over herds of elephants and other wildlife and scenery. Gosnell was enthralled and vowed to learn how to fly.

Back in the states, she continued her lessons and purchased an old Luscombe, a very serviceable, if antique tail-dragger. (She discusses at length the advantages and disadvantages of the "conventional" v tricycle type landing gear.)

Her stories reminded me of flights with my uncle when I was barely 10 (This was in the late fifties). He was in the Civil Air Patrol (which I also later joined as a radio officer -- but that's another story) and took me up in his Super Cub, many of which are still around.) Fun.

She beautifully captures the pathos, loneliness, and eccentricities of the people who man the small, often deserted, little airstrips around the country and the yearning many of them feel for the outside world. Particularly poignant was Laura, a thirty-five-year-old mother of Dawson, Georgia, who had learned to fly on a whim and now wanted nothing more to escape the parochialism of the small town where the goals and aspirations for women were pre-determined a century before. Ridiculed and shunned by the community for daring to do something women just don't do (fly a plane), she latched on to Gosnell as a symbol of freedom she didn't have the courage enough to embrace, but which Gosnell (perhaps because she was a cosmopolitan New Yorker) had adopted.

Loved this book.… (plus d'informations)