I’ve been in a magic place. Would it be wrong to say that that the most reverential I have ever felt is toward Antoine de Saint Exupery? I could easily see myself, like the subway riders who read the bible every morning, every ride, but with Wind, Sand and Stars putting some wisdom perspective into my mind to guide the day. I don’t doubt that a passage from any page would provide the outlook I would like to face the world with, or that a context would arise in which I would be so grateful for the whispering of Exupery’s voice, the illumination of his stars, and the tracks in his sand to steer my own actions.
This book is a pilot’s memoir. It’s a work of art. But it’s also a philosophical great, belonging in the cannon of all great philosophical literature. There are too many esteemed things to admire Exupery for. He is the playful and massive-hearted storyteller who brought us The Little Prince. He is a philosopher writer who provides new ways of seeing. And he was a skilled and courageous French Air Force pilot who flew reconnaissance missions across Europe and Africa during the Spanish Civil War and World War II. This aviation memoir includes a riveting tale of a crash in the North African desert, that Exupery loved and navigated so well, which lead to a hallucinatory four days of being lost and dehydrated and near death. When reading these pages, you’ll find the prince in the man, and you’ll know so much the better his need for a well and a sheep.
If you didn’t know this already, I’d like to deliver the news gently. Exupery’s plane did disappear one day on a mission over the Mediterranean. What a place he holds in the heavens- and how well he knew them on earth.
Here’s one of a thousand passages in Wind, Sand and Stars that makes me shiver with gratitude, where Exupery describes his friend’s lesson to him before his first flight across the Pyranees.
But what a strange lesson in geography I was given! Guillaumet did not teach Spain to me, he made the country my friend. He did not talk about provinces, or peoples, or livestock. Instead of telling me about Guadix, he spoke of three orange-trees on the edge of town: “Beware of these trees. Better mark them on the map.” And those three orange-trees seemed to me thenceforth higher than the Sierra Nevada.
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