The Witness on the Mountain

Several years ago, I was hiking in the high Sierra. After many hours of arduous climbing, I reached a remote, rocky area near the summit of a mountain. There, I discovered the remains of a small propeller plane that had crashed many decades earlier. I sat down on a rock, looking at the mangled metal and thinking about the tragedy that must have befallen the pilot and perhaps the passengers. As I sat there, two other hikers approached and joined me. We looked at the wreckage together in silence until the man spoke. “I once saw a plane crash,” he said. “It was about five or six years ago. I was in the San Fernando Valley, and I saw a small private plane taking off from Burbank Airport crash into a parking lot. I learned later that the crash killed the pilot, an elderly man, and his wife. Apparently he suffered a heart attack. It was very sad.” “That was my grandparents,” I said. “They owned several small independent bookstores along the California coast, and my grandfather loved to fly up and visit the stores.”