My two cents: Unfettered flight across the Palouse

Colfax farmer Mike Ensley’s RV7 kit plane banks sharply, offering a diamond-clear birds-eye view of the rolling expanse of the Palouse. The air was clear and mostly calm the day of the flight, Feb. 12. Ensley takes his plane for a cruise below the clouds about once a week.

Colfax from 1,000 feet in the air is no longer the mile-long string of early 1900s buildings which it appears to be on the ground.

No, from 1,000 feet in the air, Colfax becomes a three-pronged sprawl of colorful buildings through a deep canyon edged with cliffs, shining with the ribbon of the Palouse River.

Such was my view from the cozy cockpit of Mike Ensley’s home-built Van’s RV7 the morning of Feb. 12.

Mike Ensley in the cockpit, wearing a headset with a radio speaker.

Ensley, a long-time farmer just outside Colfax, took six years to build the kit plane.

Out of the kindness of his heart, he agreed to take this reporter along for a ride last week.

Flying 160 mph below the cloud cover over the rolling and majestic expanse of the Palouse is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

We start out about 11 a.m., because Ensley wants to beat the mild rainstorm heading our way from the south.

Ensley stores his two-seater out at the Colfax airport in a hangar he built.

When he opens the door to the hangar, I am surprised with how sleek, efficient and small the silver plane is.

I have flown only on commercial airplanes, so the thought of a plane with a 25-foot wingspan being able to carry two people is slightly daunting. The plane weighs 1,100 pounds empty.

Ensley, who has been flying for 34 years, does a slow pre-flight inspection of his masterpiece, meticulously checking the gas cap, wheels, tail and (confession) other doohickeys I don’t pretend to understand.

We climb into the tiny cockpit, he shuts the canopy, and we fasten our seatbelts. It is a snug fit, this cockpit.

Ensley starts the engine and gestures to a small headset at my feet. I put it on over the buzz of the propellor, to realize the headset comes with a radio link so we can talk.

I am startled when his radio voice suddenly crackles into my ear.

Ensley’s voice, oddly robotic and reminiscent of the radio communication you hear in World War II movies, calmly begins explaining his actions; we are waiting to use the runway because a crop duster is currently in take-off, we are waiting for the engine oil to heat up to flying speed, he will now perform a routine computer check list of the plane’s systems.

Five minutes passes and the crop duster is gone.

“It’ll leave the air disturbed for a second or two,” his voice crackles over the radio.

I nod and say “okay,” into my nifty headset. I am getting more and more excited. I try to hide this by routinely agreeing with everything he says, as if I do this type of thing every day.

Another five minutes and then we are headed down the runway, the whole plane shaking and buzzing with the force of the propellor which is less than four feet in front of us.

In a moment, the entire contraption lifts and we are airborne. We are rising faster and faster, the land below stretching out.

At 1,000 feet above the earth, the Palouse in February becomes a farm-checkered map of miles of mud, city, trees, and the occasional stream.

The cockpit is see-through on all sides.

The vertigo is at first overwhelming for me, then stunning, then breathtaking as I realize I can see Steptoe Butte, Pullman, and the canyon of the Snake River within the same turn of my head.

We head east first, cruising over Albion, which appears much larger from the air than it does on the ground.

Wheat hills rise and fall below like slow-motion ocean waves, crusty and brown. Silver and red barns and farm houses dot the soil, cupped in the palms of wheat fields.

Everything from the air looks eerily like an intelligent child set up a very nice sprawl of farmland with his toys.

This city of 2,800 seen from the air. Can you find the Palouse River?

We fly over Colfax next. I recognize the city first because of the rocky cliffs at the north end of town and then because of the flood channel running through like a concrete scar. And because Ensley said it was Colfax.

“Want to go see the Lower Granite Dam?” Ensley’s voice crackles me out of my awe.

“Okay,” I say. I am snapping photos now of Colfax, and the Palouse River, and a stoic set of red barns and farm houses laid out next to a field.

We bank and head south.

It hits me, suddenly, we are traveling 160 mph over land. That is so fast. And that from Colfax, we will be flying over the Snake River in a matter of minutes.

It isn’t as much as the river that takes my breath away when we arrive, but the mountainous eyebrow of cliffs which run for miles along the water. No wonder they call the slopes of the Snake River “the breaks”.

Ensley tells me he can gauge how hard the wind is blowing on the land below from the texture of the river surface as it reflects in the sun.

Some days it is as smooth as glass and other days he can make out white caps. Today, we can make out still wrinkles glinting with the sun on the water. The wind is a bit rough, he determines, but the lack of white caps signals nothing too serious.

We bank again and head north for Colfax. He asks me if there is anything else I’d like to see.

I can barely speak I’m still so overwhelmed by the grandeur of seeing the world I travel on land turn to something so different by air. I say, no, this has been more than amazing.

The landing has a few bounces, turning my stomach and reminding me just how light and small this plane really is.

We buzz into his hangar and both climb out. What a morning.