The Worlds of Papa Lynn

Some of the most marvelous days of my childhood began in the sun-drenched plum-colored kitchen of a four-story home nestled at the base of the West Elk Mountains. By the time we moseyed down the creaking wooden staircase - the same stairs my dad descended from his third-story bedroom each morning when he was a kid - the grandparents were already halfway through their day it seemed.

Grandma Debbie saw me first, a cheery smile across her tan face. “Good morning, sweetie! Did you sleep OK?”

Beyond her at the stove stood Papa Lynn, spearing sizzling strips of bacon with a fork, squinting through a plume of smoke ascending to fill the room. Toasty rays of Colorado sun streamed in through the row of windows panoramically framing the mountains.

“Well good morning Isaac. I wonder if there’s still time to go flying today? We’re cutting it close. I thought maybe you’d decided to sleep till dinnertime. Come on, grab a plate. Waffles are ready.”

The raucous sound to be expected of an army of children echoed and shook all through the vast house. Far above us in the distant reaches of the fourth story, several of my older brothers exercised their liberties with foosball, pool, and baskets of games, trinkets, and model airplanes filling the attic, all exactly as they were in the 70s when my dad and uncle were little boys. By the time the breakfast rotation was over, I was pacing back and forth impatiently, ready to get outside. If this grand house was a world of its own, the landscape it sat within was an entire universe of treasure and adventure. Trails, four-wheelers, the thin black strip of runway, and three massive airplane hangars at the end of it, packed tight with everything a kid could dream of: bright orange railroad speeders (track inspector vehicles), an old army Willys Jeep, antique cars and family memorabilia, gliders and planes, homemade dirt bikes, and Papa Lynn’s pride and joy: two vintage bi-planes - a 1943 Stearman PT17 and a 1939 Staggerwing “S” model, both of which he meticulously rebuilt and which he takes into the air on special occasions.

Crawford, the whole family, 2004

John & Ben, piloting and co-piloting the Willys

Colorado is known for its colorful landscapes and characters, and my grandfather, Lynn French, is one of them. Now well into his eighties, he still carries the youthful grin of a child, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes. His tousled strawberry blondberry hair seems to glow in the mile-high sun. Like so many young adventure-seekers in the 60s, he left behind a normal childhood in Illinois, and made his way west. He taught skiing in Crested Butte in the winters and worked in a coal mine in the summers, paid his way through law school in Denver, before settling down in the Gunnison area in the 70s.

To the uninitiated, his sharp wit and dangerous knack for teasing can be polarizing. Everywhere he goes, he provides a generous and effortless stream of dry, humorous remarks which appear to be completely innocent. To Papa Lynn, teasing is a language of affection - and sometimes criticism. Those who know him well can discern the difference, and we increasingly cherish this unique gift in a world oftentimes superficial and bland.

I guess it’s contagious. Those who know me and my brothers well would suddenly understand we come by it honestly - if only they could meet Papa Lynn. (Actually, he’s typically on his best behavior during first encounters. We’ve learned this the awkward way after warning friends what to expect, trying to explain his endearing ways in advance, only to be left shaking our heads and smiling when they tell us after meeting him: “Your grandpa is the sweetest, most charming, gracious guy I’ve ever met! What was all that about?”).

When my dad was five, Papa Lynn bought this chunk of bare land just outside the tiny ranching community of Crawford. A lifelong and enthusiastic private pilot, he carved a long runway down the lush alfalfa field, which ends abruptly at the edge of the Smith Fork Canyon. Today, the runway is lined with homes and hangars owned and occupied by mostly retired pilots, for whom flying is now a hobby.

With Uncle Wes & Aunt Rocky at the big house

Between his rural law practice and his duties as county judge, he taught both my dad and Uncle Wes to fly before they learned to drive. Uncle Wes, whom we idolized as children and are still deeply fond of, went on to fly F-15s in the Air Force.

My dad took a different path, married at eighteen, and became a plumber. Raising and homeschooling ten children with my mom, and managing a small business and homestead, he gave up flying for a few decades but picked it back up when we moved to Idaho.

A few of my brothers Papa Lynn also taught to fly. In fact, Gabe has an airstrip and a hangar at his house in Idaho, and shares a small plane with my dad.

My brother Gabe’s kids with Papa Lynn at Gabe’s place

I’ve long carried a dream to fly, but life has a way of forcing too many important decisions that take your time and attention all at once when you’re young. One day, though. The dream, of course, was born during those long warm days spent in Crawford, usually one week a year, or sometimes every other year whenever my parents could afford to get away. Flying, cherry picking, jeeping and camping in the mountains. For a kid from Texas, those trips to Colorado were like visiting a wonderland.

(My childhood friend Noah - who also loves flying and adventures of many varieties - once told us that, based on my detailed descriptions to him as a kid, he thought my grandpa’s place in Crawford must literally be heaven on earth.)

But there was another very different wonderland, twenty-five hundred miles east, that I came to love for much the same reason.

A little white summer cottage in Maine, in the middle of a gently-rolling meadow at the edge of Branch Lake, forty-five minutes inland from Acadia National Park. This house is much smaller, looks entirely different in shape and style, but carries the same quirky qualities as the one in Colorado. It’s full of character you could say, just like its owner. And running right through the middle of that meadow is… a runway - which also serves as a driveway. Papa Lynn believes in having multiple ways to access wherever he lives or spends time.

My first experience with Maine was also my first commercial flight, and it was a memorable one. After more than a dozen delays in Dallas, we finally took off around midnight and touched down in Boston just as the sky turned pink. This was a year or so before GPS and smartphones, and my mom and I spent six hours hopelessly tangled in Boston’s maze of streets, stopping a couple times for directions from locals, only to be yelled at in a furious accent that sounded as alien to my naive southern ears as any foreign language. Somehow, we finally found I-95 north and escaped into the glorious summer countryside of New England, stopping for a snack in Portsmouth, New Hampshire - a town famous to us from one of our favorite books, The Ox-Cart Man - before continuing north.

The northeastern late-afternoon light bathed that grassy meadow in a magical aura when we finally pulled into the runway/driveway. Papa Lynn and Grandma Debbie welcomed us warmly with hugs, laughter - and of course a little teasing about the delay, which Grandma Debbie chided him for.

Thus began my love affair with Maine - and all of New England. Watching the red ball of sun peek above the Atlantic from the top of Cadillac Mountain, kayaking and sailing in the bays, eating fish and chips at The Chart Room, picnicking with cousins, getting lost in hordes of tourists in Bar Harbor with ice cream cones dripping from our hands, climbing over the rocks above the lapping waves at Bass Harbor Light in the glow of sunset, and collecting enough painting material to keep my ravenous appetite occupied for several years.

Years later my love grew even more when I first experienced autumn in that wonderful world all of its own. Papa Lynn generously offered Helen and me the little white cottage for our honeymoon, which we readily accepted. Each day we watched the trees adjust one or sometimes three shades brighter, until their leaves shimmered like flames ignited by the October sun. We explored the charming coastal towns of Belfast, Rockport, and Camden, hiked Acadia, and spent the rainy days cuddled up by the woodstove. The wide picture window in the cozy wood-paneled living room frames the long meadow rolling down to the edge of the trees and lake beyond like a Hudson River School masterpiece. Oh yes, and we paddled in the glassy water of a few late afternoons, surrounded by the nearly perfect reflections of maples, birch, oaks, and huge chunks of granite.

A perfect paddle with the perfect person

The cozy white cottage in Maine

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In my six-year-old imagination and my twenty-nine-year-old memory alike, Papa Lynn creates worlds of wonder wherever he goes.

Crisp, pine-laced air, sunbaked juniper, and mountain wildflowers. Valley views toward Needle Rock and Lands End Peak. Summer storms bruising the sky before giving way to the bronze light of late afternoon.

Blinding sun sparkles, the briny smell of ocean, and wild blueberries carpeting the meadow enveloping the little white cottage. Winding roads cut like tunnels through groves of hardwood, leading to small harbors crowded with lobster boats.

And in both, airplanes, hangars full of old artifacts and machines that move, and long runways to land, take off, or take an evening walk. The little things, too. Case upon case of seltzer water and orange soda squeezed into old fridges, reading glasses on every surface (never more than an arm’s length away), and always a beloved, reclusive cat. Magdalena, Keekus, Pickles, Tequila (the first), and now Tequila (the second) - he has a complicated relationship with the current batch of great-grandchildren.

To Papa Lynn I owe an immeasurable amount - including my existence - and I love him dearly. Both of his worlds have helped make me. As an adult, some part of every place I’ve helped make began in them.

On our journey home from three months in Mexico in a few weeks, we plan to go through Colorado, to visit the big home at the edge of the runway of the Crawford Airport. Papa Lynn hasn’t been feeling well, and we’re overdue a visit. I can’t wait to spend a couple days with him and Grandma Debbie, maybe take the boys up in the air if he’s up to it, and run up and down the creaking wooden staircase, just like I did when I was a little boy.

This time, the little blond-headed boys shaking the house are my own.

Riding the speeders, 2002