Soon they are sailing through a miasma of clouds and fog. Néri is passing notes to Saint-Exupéry. "No bearings. No bearings." The pilot is left to navigate on passion and instinct—traits fortuitously acute in this airman. (One colleague will later say, "When the flight is normal, Saint-Exupéry is dangerous; given complications, he's brilliant.") These are the daring early years of aviation; one mail pilot has died almost every month. Humans have been crossing deserts by camel for millennia, sailing seas for a thousand years, climbing mountains for a hundred—the sky is the last great terra incognita for adventurers.
Read the rest of the 2004 Outside article on Antoine de Saint-Exupery.
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