Wind, Sand and Stars: Thoughts

In Wind, Sand and Stars Antoine De Saint-Exupery takes readers back to the days when pilots were still venturing into the unknown world between the earth and sky.

“A pilot’s business is with the wind, with the stars, with night, with sand, with sea. He strives to outwit the forces of nature. He stares in expectancy for the coming dawn the way a gardener awaits the coming of spring. He looks forward to port as to a promised land, and truth for him is what lives in the stars.”

One thing I enjoyed about this book was that the pilots and their planes were still very much at the mercy of nature. Their planes were small and not very powerful, unlike planes today. They could not just shoot through the sky, guided by computers and powered by twin jet engines. When there was a storm they had to fly through it, not over it. At one point the author describes an amazing storm that one of his friends had to fly through of the coast of South Africa, a storm where water tornadoes were shooting up out of the sea all around him.

“Great black waterspouts had reared themselves seemingly in the immobility of temple pillars. Swollen at their tops, they were supporting the squat and lowering each arch of the tempest, but through the rifts in the arch there fell slabs of light and the full moon sent her radiant beams between the pillars down upon the frozen tiles of the sea. Through these uninhabited ruins Mermoz made his way, gliding slantwise from one channel of light to the next, circling round those giant pillars in which there must have rumbled the upsurge of the sea, flying for four hours through these corridors of moonlight toward the exit from the temple.”

For me, the best part of this book is the chapter in which the author describes his survival experience in the Sahara desert. He and his copilot were stranded for over 3 days with less than a pint of water. After walking in the desert for 100 miles with nothing to drink, Antoine lays down in the sand and buries himself, expecting to die by morning. Throughout this experience he had seen numerous mirages and hallucinations and it tore at my heart every time he was filled with elation that he had been saved, only to realize that the images before him were only in his mind. Through amazing endurance and sheer luck the two men were saved, after coming within hours of literally shriveling up like raisins. The story is too good for me to summarize here. It’s chapter 8… you should read it.

Lastly, I enjoyed the author’s poetic view on life. He was very philosophical and often paused to reflect on the world around him. I loved the following passage, though it left me with a sense of sadness:

“Gazing at this transfigured desert I remember the games of my childhood—the dark and golden park we peopled with gods; the limitless kingdom we made of this square mile never thoroughly explored, never thoroughly charted. We created a secret civilization where footfalls had a meaning and things a savor known in no other world.”

            “And when we grow to be men and live under other laws, what remains of that park filled with the shadows of childhood, magical, freezing, burning? What do we learn when we return to it and stroll with a sort of despair along the outside of its little wall of gray stone, marveling that within a space so small we should have founded a kingdom that seemed to us infinite—what do we learn except that in this infinity we shall never again set foot, and that it is into the game and not the park that we have lost the power to enter?”

My rating: 6 out of 10