» By W. Scott Olsen ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID VOGIN A thousand feet below my wing tip, the Sheyenne River joins the Red River of the North. Hard summer sunlight sparkles on the water, and I can see a breeze in the leaves of the oak and maple trees that line the banks. This is the early summer prairie at FOLLOW THE RIVER REVISITING ONE OF OUR EARLIEST FORMS OF NAVIGATION the border of North Dakota and Minnesota. The floods have receded. Farmland seems to turn more green by the hour as shoots of grain and corn and sunflowers and sugar beets reach out of the soil. Two boaters on the river—a father and son, perhaps—look up at the sound of the airplane, and the younger one waves. I rock the wings back and forth to return the greeting, and then both them wave more earnestly. I half-expect to see them fall into the water. PLUS View a video. NOVEMBER 2011 FLIGHT TRAINING / 29