I fly in deep river canyons and come to rest where flat land is scarce. My day is a hopscotch route, up and down, up and down. For the dwellers of remote outposts I am a taxi service, mail carrier and delivery van. On occasion I am called on to be an ambulance driver, an emergency outlet arcing over the granite peaks. Once I have been a hearse of last resort, bearing out the body of a drowned river run ner as cargo in the tail, cinched up tight in his sleeping bag. But these are details that don't change my waking day. I attend to the variables around me: the steep slopes, the jutting trees, updrafts and crosswinds and density altitude. My importance doesn't lie in what I carry or where I go. I am responsible for my skill with the yoke, a knowledge of flaps and throttle, an eye for the condition of the air. It is my task to settle the machine to the earth in impossible places, like alighting at the bottom of a soup bowl. I make runs out of Cascade, where I work for Chimp Atherton. His name is on the hangar and the planes. My husband, Ron, and I hired on eighteen years ago, when it was just the three of us. Today there are four pilots, Chimp not included, as well as two mechan ics and three women who run the office and take radio calls. Now, in the summer, is our busiest season. Every pilot and every plane will work steady through until the aspen groves turn yellow and quaky. Then we will bolt skis to a couple of the Cessnas and deliver groceries and mail to some of the ranches that get snowed-in. But the work is slower in winter. Two of the summer pilots head down to Arizona and run a flight school, and then appear again when the rivers here are high with snowmelt. I prefer the taxi and supply flights, ferrying cargo around, travel ing routes I can see in my sleep. Chimp likes some of the fancy flying, chartering for the Forest Service Aerial Fire Attack when the ridges start to burn. Powell, a moustache with a man attached, likes to get up there and tool around for hours, so he volunteers for the Fish and Wildlife trips to monitor gray wolves they have marked with radio collars. I'm not much for adventure these days, though.