Lindbergh, who married Charles in 1929, describes a flight they took on a Great Circle Route from New York through Canada, Alaska, Russia, and Japan to China in 1931, flying a Lockheed low-wing monoplane called Sirius, with a 700 hp radial Cyclone engine, pontoons, and enough fuel capacity to extend its range to 2,000 miles.
She learned to send and receive Morse Code and operated the radio on board, whose antenna, a wire wound on a reel with a weighted ball on the end, was let down to trail behind the airplane, with the length adjusted for the signal’s wavelength, and reeled in when they landed.
They left on July 27, 1931 from Long Island, flew to Washington and back, then to their home base in Rockland Harbor in Maine, and then to Ottawa. Then the real trip began, to Churchill in Manitoba, Baker Lake in the Northwest Territories, and Aklavik, also in the Northwest Territories. At Baker Lake and Aklavik the settlers get one boat visit a year, and the Lindberghs are in Aklavik when it arrives; she describes the excitement. After several days there, they push on to Point Barrow, at the northern tip of Alaska. In Barrow, they are entertained with a reindeer and goose dinner, go to church on Sunday where the minister has to translate Biblical references (sheep, garners, oxen) unfamiliar to his Eskimo congregation.
They have to worry for the first time about darkness as they fly south toward Nome, since the midnight sun ends in August. But fog ahead means they have to land on the coast of Seward Peninsula. In Nome, they watch the King Island Tribe’s chief win a kayak race and see an Eskimo Wolf Dance.
Lindbergh contrasts her preconceived idea of Soviet Russia with what they actually find in Kamchatka. At the island of Karaginski, they are greeted in French by a zoölogist studying the island’s fauna. The Russians enjoy Lindbergh’s baby pictures and they feed the flyers. In Petropavlovsk there is a small fire in the government house where they are staying. Lindbergh enjoys her brief encounter with Russians.
In the Chishima archipelago of Japan, trying to reach Nemuro, the fog forces them to land. A radio operator recommends Buroton Bay behind them, but the fog has closed in and they land near Ketoi Island in the open ocean. The radio operator sends a nearby ship, the Shinshuru Maru, to assist them. Singing sailors invite them for meals, help them when there anchor is lost, and tow them to Buroton Bay when they can’t start the wet engine. Fog foils a second attempt to reach Nemuro, and they land in a lake where a friendly fisherman, his son, and his father feed them fresh fish, potatoes, and rice.
Lindbergh inserts a nice essay, “The Paper and String of Life,” which begins with a beautifully wrapped gift from Japan she received as a child, and whose theme is that “in every Japanese there was an artist” in all the details, the “paper and string” of life. There is one grimly ironic detail, a haiku about a mother whose little boy has died. Lindbergh, whose own baby boy would be killed in a kidnapping about six months later, is enchanted by the haiku and the details of the Tea Ceremony. “If only I could stay here long enough,” she writes, “I would learn to see too . . . . I would learn simile. I would I would see that a certain wet stone . . . was wet as a new-peeled pear. Then I would learn metaphor and see in my little boy “My hunter of the dragon fly.”
As they are about to leave Osaka, they find a stowaway in the baggage compartment, an unhappy teenager who thought they were on their way back to America. But they were headed to China.
Long before they reached the land, they could see the brown sediment of the Yangtze in flood. Lindbergh calls rivers the only physical features “at their best from the air,” and says “usually they are kind to fliers,” providing a sure landmark even at night.
Lindbergh remembers Nanking first as the river in flood, then as the “Purple Mountain,” and finally as the wall. She says it’s the current capital. They go out to survey the vast extent of the floods. One day Charles takes an American and a Chinese doctor with some medical supplies, but they are nearly overwhelmed by starving villagers in sampans and have to take off again.
When there is no lake to land on and the flood waters have started to recede around Hankow, Sirius has to land in the swift Yangtze. The British aircraft carrier Hermes offers to bring it on board with a harness each day. while it is being lowered on the last day before the carrier leaves, the plane slips and is damaged. The Hermes takes the plane and the Lindberghs to Shanghai, where the plane is shipped to Lockheed for repairs and the Lindberghs sail to Japan, train from the southern tip to Yokohama, and sail for America. Lindbergh speculates on the meaning of Sayonara, “of all the good-bys I have heard the most beautiful” in its straightforwardness, meaning, “since it must be so.” In the last chapter they are flying again and she thinks about the magic of flight, quite divorced from its advantages of speed, accessibility, and convenience. ( )

Strangely disappointing. Condescending with a sort of faux poetry - almost precious. Every time I actually wanted to know more - oh! we're off on another leg!

Very interesting, by the wife and co-traveller of the famous aviator. A fascinating trip through seldom-visited areas, with Anne having to learn both Morse code and operating the primitive plane radio in order to ensure they can get to the next required stop. ( )