I wish! Maybe in another lifetime! I have a friend, though, who's been a hang glider pilot for over twenty years. Lon Peregrino would be in the position to teach Rick to fly. The condor biologist Rick meets will be a hang glider pilot, which makes sense-he'd be a man who liked birds so much, he wanted to fly like one. Icarus flew a prehistoric hang glider and Rick Walker would fly a modern one. The last ten miles was so rough it took us five and a half hours!ĭid your idea of Rick flying the hang glider come from Icarus?Įxactly. The four-wheel-drive “road” to get there (see photo) was fifty miles long. Its landscapes suggested all sorts of possibilities for the story. We spent four days hiking in the Maze, for the fun of it and so I'd be able to write the descriptions. When my publisher designed the cover for the paperback, they wrote, “When your life is a maze, you need wings.” Perfect. My main character could be a boy in a lot of trouble, who considers his whole life to be nothing but dead ends-a maze. The Maze is the most remote part of Canyonlands, and would be a spectacular setting for a book. The labyrinth reminded me of the Maze, about 150 miles up the Colorado River from Vermilion Cliffs. Icarus flew out of an elaborate puzzle-prison called the labyrinth, on wings his father had fashioned for them both. This brought to mind Icarus, from Greek mythology. My main character could be a boy who has flying dreams.
I kept remembering the flying dreams I'd had when I was a kid. Why did you choose the Maze in Canyonlands National Park for the setting of your story?Ī lot of my story ideas come from making associations as I'm daydreaming. Imagine, a wingspan nearly ten feet across! I knew that my readers would be fascinated with this magnificent soaring bird. On my way home I was already thinking I should write a story in which a kid gets involved with the condors. The biologists on site told us that they would be posting their field notes about the birds on their Web site. It was a thrill to watch the huge young condors in flight. The idea of seeing “nature's most magnificent flying machine” in the wild was so exciting, we drove right down there. I was fascinated-I knew that the last wild condors had been captured and were part of a captive breeding program. In December of 1996, my wife and I read that six young California condors had just been released at the Vermilion Cliffs, close to where we begin our Grand Canyon river trips. It does not store any personal data.What got you started on this one? The boy in trouble? The condors? The Maze in Canyonlands National Park? The hang gliding?
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