Richard Bach - Travels With Puff: A Gentle Game of Life and Death

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Nothing by Chance

Flying: The Aviation Trilogy (single volume)

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A Gift of Wings

Theres No Such Place as Far Away

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

The Bridge Across Forever

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Running from Safety

Out of My Mind: The Discovery of Saunders-Vixen

Messiahs Handbook: Reminders for the Advanced Soul

Hypnotizing Maria

Thank Your Wicked Parents

The Ferret Chronicles

Rescue Ferrets at Sea

Air Ferrets Aloft

Writer Ferrets: Chasing the Muse

Rancher Ferrets on the Range

The Last War: Detective Ferrets and the Case of the Golden Deed

Curious Lives: Adventures from the Ferret Chronicles (single volume)

Travels with Puff

A Gentle Game of Life and Death

by Richard Bach

Photos by Dan Nickens

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Copyright 2013 by Richard Bach

Photographs Copyright 2013 by Dan Nickens

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

ISBN: 978-1-937777-03-6

In Case You Wont Believe This

I didnt know it as I wrote, but Travels with Puff turned out to be a story hummed about the theme-song for my brief stay on this planet. Same songs shared by I dont know how many hundreds of millions: What is it to become free, and how do I express my freedom to choose my own life, every day?

The mavericks among us, our wanderers, our explorers, they hand us examples all the time. Willing to give up convention, willing to cast off from visible security for the invisible, or for no security at all? Hi-ho, adventurers, fellow mavericks, steer this way!

Not me. Im no maverick. My only claim to mavericity is twofold: 1) I do not own a tie, and 2) I have never worn a tuxedo. Further, stubborn defiance, I intend never to do either, for so long as I may live. Not claim enough to become an Alpha Maverick, Im somewhere down the list among the Lambdas, or the Upsilons.

For this reason, some suspect that I may bend the truth, in my books, play fast with it, if not loose.

I have no smallest doubt that this story would be subject to those claims, as well, youd think I made it up. I knew before ever I met Mister Toad, or even Puff herself, that others would doubt these meetings really happened, doubt that anything on these pages was more than the idle writer rising an inch from his feather-pillows to pen his imaginings.

Enter my humble cell-phone camera for the first sketchy evidence: photographs. Next enter Dan Nickens, his matching spirit, his own experimental seaplane, sister to Puff, and his unmatched one-of-a-kind Canon EOS 5D Series II Full Frame CMOS Digital Single Lens Reflex Compact Body Super-Camera, the better to fasten upon the truth of each word, every days adventure which you may very well be about to read.

Destiny brought us together for this flight, and for love of you, dear reader, to prove once and always that every event, every idea upon the following pages or upon your high-tech visi-screen pseudopage is every single one of them true, and here be the photographs to prove it!

Not wild adventure, through this volume, but gentle, of the sort that anyone can assay, with near certainty; no requests for dying along the way which cant be declined.

A few years ago, someone asked me by way of their T-shirt, Got Freedom?

Heres, a bit delayed and by way of two small seaplanes and a continent ten thousand horizons wide, my answer.

Richard Bach

The Encounter

R emember The Wind in the Willows?

In that story, do you recall Mister Toad, the enthusiastic Lord of Toad Hall? You didnt find him... eccentric, did you?

Neither did I.

His first sight of a Motor-Car, and his fascination with the machine, you wouldnt call that obsession, would you?

Neither would I.

Came the day, when Toad saw an Aero-Plane, for which he dropped the Motor-Car like an old jam-pot, it was his natural wish to taste the freedom that is flight above the earth, was it not?

No more than that.

Toad said it better than ever I could: Theres no freedom without independence, my friends. No freedom without shattering the chains of Someone Else pushing, forcing, deciding my life against my will!

He stood in the great Hall, stood before his friends Ratty and Mole and Badger and me: Freedom, I say! Freedoms living not as someone says I must, but living true to my unchained spirit!

Hear! Hear! We four shouted agreement, pounded the table with our open paws, fine silverware set a-rattling.

Toad, he spoke my truth. When weve won independence at last, what shall we do with the freedom it bringslive by the rules of others? Theres naught more independent than a flying machine, I say, naught more free than an Aero-Plane, one so near the twin of Toads that he could fly it blindfold!

Were not talking Then, or Long Ago, were talking Now!

Being thus persuaded yesterday, I bought an Aero-Plane.

The Advertisement

A ll those technical words mean something to me, as they ought after a lifetime messing around with air-craft. This machine, so like Toads, it occurred to me... well, Im a good home!

I called Jim Ratte (pronounced Ratty, as Toads loyal friend) at 321-253-9434 and he answered hello and I said, Im a good home!

Isnt she a sweet little thing? Shes a flying-boat, of course: flies through air, lands on earth, floats on water. Only one thing about such an airplane youve got to remember: Land on land, put the wheels down. Land on water, bring the wheels up. Any amphibian airplane, dare you touch on a lake or a river with the wheels down, theres this monster splash and you do your cursing and self-recriminations mostly underwater. Im pretty good about checking wheels up for water landings, though, I can handle that.

Theres one minor challenge: my new delight lives in a hangar in Florida, twenty-eight hundred miles, as crows fly, from my home in Washington State. Ill be off, therefore, clean across the continent, to fly my airplane thirty-four hundred miles home, as it is not a crow and theres still winter in the mountains, snows and winds to be avoided like midnight zombies by little airplanes.