Take-off: almost a ton of inert matter transformed by the pilot as it lifts off the runway into a thing of spirit and beauty. Take-off: lifting one's shadow off the earth, entering a new element where movement is the very condition for existence, for, as the author observes, "in life, to choose the wrong wife or the wrong lift is conventionally viewed as being matters of varying gravity, but in piloting an aircraft an act of petty oversight, due to the obvious but decisive fact that in flight there can be no stopping, could be fatal."The eight chapters of this book carry the reader up into the clouds, into a world governed by different laws where as we look though the cockpit window - and into our own souls - we see the earth below, and our own lives, under a new angle and with a painful new clarity. Whether he is reliving his first solo flight or a frightening experience as he pilots a light aircraft through storm clouds, his training and his instincts constantly at odds, or the myste