He’s perhaps the best bush pilot in Africa, the one who teaches the other fliers – and the occasional writer – how it’s done. But when he has a midlife crisis, it’s a doozy.

Page 1 of 4 » Next

My nerves are going to s---.” Normally, this is not the kind of sentiment you like to hear expressed by your pilot before a flight.

But coming, as it does, from Milne David “CC” (for “Captain Crash”) Pocock on the evening before he will lead me through emergency canyon turns and dive-bomb landings into the African bush, the words strike me as especially worrisome.

We’re on his back porch, deep in the South African veldt, and the man regarded as maybe the greatest, and certainly the craziest, bush pilot in all of Africa leans against the bar that runs along the wall of his house, draining another dram of Scotch.

Early in the morning, two new students will arrive for a session of Pocock’s famed Bush Pilot Course, known the world over as the Top Gun academy of bush pilot-dom. I’ll be auditing the course from the back seat.

Looking at Pocock now, it’s hard to imagine how this will all work, exactly. “I’m totally exhausted,” he says over an insect drone so loud it approaches the decibel level of city traffic. Naked except for a towel wrapped around his bony waist, he is waiting for his Jacuzzi to heat up.

He has described the whirlpool as his “favorite spot,” a place into which he pours his bath salts and retires to soak away the pressures of his life. Unfortun­ately, his favorite spot is on the fritz — after an hour the salted water bubbles away, still lukewarm, even as the whiskey continues to disappear down his gullet.

Pocock has also mentioned a masseuse and an acupuncturist who periodically arrive to drive knuckles and needles deep into his balled-up neck, shoulders and back. He calls these treatments his “physic,” but apparently they’ve lost their effectiveness. He also sees a shrink.

The allure of the African continent itself is embodied in the person of the bush pilot. You think of adventurous lives pursued in some of the most spectacular and tragic settings on earth — Robert Redford in Out of Africa, gunrunners, humanitarians airlifting supplies to refugee camps, safari outfitters chauffeuring travelers from game reserve to game reserve, rifles over their shoulders, knives in their belts.

Though Pocock has never done any gunrunning, he has pursued everything else on that list, all of it involving flying as madcap as the terrain is picturesque. On the 45-hectare plot he acquired five years ago on the edge of Kruger National Park, he has carved out a 1,000-meter grass airstrip, a two-story house and attached hangar that would seem to be the epitome of the rogue-pilot existence. The sign for Bush Air, the parent company of the Bush Pilot Course, says it all: anything, anytime, anywhere.

But as I’m learning, the bush pilot’s life is more stressful than one might think. “When you’re flying this form of flying, you have to be ahead of everything,” Pocock says. “Otherwise, you will crash. On a daily basis, I’m dealing with somebody in the left seat who’s got no experience.

Even if he has a couple thousand hours, he’s never been exposed to this kind of flying, and you never know when he’s gonna screw up. Your mind is working so hard, at such a pace — that’s what sucks you totally dry.” The pressure, in other words, has been building for months, if not years.

Page 1 of 4 » Next

Previous article « Fashion