11^th may, 2011

The first minutes after an accident bring man an exaggerated faith in his powers. Time passes and so does that faith. Hope of being rescued arises-someone knows of your existence.

Hope passes. Destructive stages lie in wait: bewilderment (why doesn’t anyone come and rescue me?), impatience, anger, despair. And then the final stage. It is customary to consider it avoid. Thus, the stage does not exist. The victim-if he has not lost the ability to think by that time-realizes that the hope of being rescued he had before is the answer. So is the faith he had in his powers.

Heidi hoped she is would be rescued. And she continued to believed that the world small.

Let us change gears and slow the pace of this story. Heidi was not alone in the mistaken belief that “the world is small.” The author is acquainted with it, too, and not second-hand. A journalist’s work involves travel. I have traveled and flown about the world for many years now. And it really does seem as though distances have been reduced: today you are in one part of the world, tomorrow you are in another. But have they? A few unpleasant occurrences in the mountains and desert helped me realize this was a delusion! One instance in particular come to mind-it bears greater similarity to the story being told here. The incident occurred in an appropriate place-the “Bermuda Triangle.” Three times in a twenty-four hour period the Boeing in which I was flying from Colombia to New York. USA (Heidi Ann Porch’s country) came close to disaster-three times. Each time, when the engines stalled, we found ourselves over boundless, deserted expanses of sea; they were not rushing past below us as before. We were spinning our wheels in a vast space. Each time the barracudas-the worst members of the shark family-were waiting for those the sky promised them. It all ended well-even when the engines caught fire. Ended and was part of the past. But the insight I gained stayed with me: the world we fly in and find ourselves face to face with in times of trouble is not small but vast. It is boundless. It did not become any smaller because we started to fly faster. It is still as it was at the hour of creation. It is constantly huge, invariably dangerous and equally indifferent to all.

Radio operators in Hawaii picked up the SOS, and a Coast Guard plane was sent up. It started looking for traces of a crash. When the pilot’s initial attempts ended in failure they surmised that the search might take longer than expected. Even of they were lucky; however, they would not be able to rescue the pilot. That could only be accomplished by someone who was right alongside; in other words, by sailors. A ship had to be brought to the probable area of the crash. Abandoning the search for Heidi, they began looking for ship. It look quite some time……..

From – No Man Is An Island

Written by Gennady Bocharov