West with the Night / Beryl Markham

 Word Count: 245

Parker Greene

From West with the Night by Beryl Markham

" Quite plainly I was to have no larger runway, and just as plainly, there was a reason for it. Blix would not ask me to chance a landing in a spot like that unless other possibilities had first been explored.

By now I was pretty sure I could land if I had to, but not at all sure I could get off again in the same space. There was no wind to check a landing nor to aid take-off. I had to think. " (pg. 520)

Beryl Markham was indeed an adventurous woman who had a huge love for flying. Beryl had a flight instructor teach her how to fly and taught all of the ways to avoid disaster, but I wonder how she was feeling during this situation. As we see in the quote above Beryl is looking at the runway Blix and Winston had made was a small runway, giving her minimal room for error while also having to land on rough terrain. Obviously she goes in for the landing as we see, but we do not get to know what was going through her mind during that time, which I think even being a skilled pilot would still be scary to land in such a small area. All we get to know is that she does land and take-off successfully with a description of how the terrain was during the landing.