Left or Right?

With Rick Hoffman at Snowmass - photo by JoAnn Sturman

W.R. Priskna

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Shortly after dawn we spotted the isolated Mexican village located in a mountainous valley thirty miles south of the Arizona border. We dropped the Huey to a few feet off the ground, accelerated to 120 knots, and roared unannounced over the rooftops. The sleepy hamlet became instantly alive – chickens flying in all directions, horses stampeding, and villagers emerging dazed from their huts. A few minutes later Bob Wade and I were north of the border flying low level over the Sonoran Desert, having completed the first phase of an early morning “training” mission. We decided to spend the last hour of our flight cruising in an area southwest of Tucson.

Baboquivari Peak is sacred to the Tohono O'odham tribe who believe their creator I'itoi resides in a cave at the base of the distinctive mountain.  At 7734 feet above sea level,  it can be seen fifty miles away from Tucson. The Baboquivari Mountain Range extends perhaps ten miles north to south and at most a mile or two east to west. The peak itself juts up abruptly from the surrounding terrain which gives it its distinctive appearance. The top 1000 feet of the mountain is formed by a bare rock protuberance which is narrow compared to the base.

Although we pilots knew most of southern Arizona like the back of our hand, we had not explored the Indian Reservation to the west of the peak. Since we were in the area, Bob and I agreed this was a good time to take a look. I turned the helicopter due west and approached Baboquivari Peak at an altitude of fifty feet below the level of the summit.

Cruising at 100 knots, we were a minute away from the peak and heading directly toward it when I casually asked Bob, “Which way should we go? Left or right?”

Indifferently, he responded, “Let's go right.”

The difference between passing to the north versus the south of the peak was only a couple hundred feet, so I gently guided the cyclic to the right, as the view of the peak filled the left side of the windscreen. At that very moment from the opposite direction an F-4 streaked past the south side of the summit at 500 knots at our exact altitude and distance from the mountain. It happened so quickly that the aircraft were miles apart before we realized what had occurred: the right turn to fly north of the peak meant life while a left one would have resulted in a head on collision.

In Thorton Wilder's 1928 Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, the author examines the lives of several travelers who perish when a rickety foot bridge spanning a deep canyon in Peru collapses as they are walking across it. Why were some on the bridge when it failed, while others nearby were not? Is there a purpose to these seemingly random events which is beyond our personal control?

Was it luck or divine intervention dictating our fate at Baboquivari?  Bob and I will never know, but as the F-4 shot by the Huey it was clear seemingly minor decisions can lead to lasting repercussions. Like those who had the good fortune not to be on the bridge at San Luis Rey when it failed, we lived to see another day.