Tom Grayson had been flying for nearly a decade, but by the spring of 2025, the thrill was gone. A 42-year-old accountant from Boise, Idaho, he’d earned his private pilot’s license in his early 30s, chasing a dream sparked by childhood tales of barnstormers and bush pilots. His Cessna 172, a reliable workhorse, had carried him on countless weekend hops—pattern work at the local airport, $100 hamburger runs to nearby towns, the occasional cross-country to visit his sister in Oregon. It was safe, predictable, and, as he’d recently admitted to himself over a lukewarm coffee at the FBO, painfully boring. General aviation had become a routine, a box checked rather than a passion stoked. He craved something more—something raw. That’s when the backcountry called.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
It started with a YouTube video late one night. Tom stumbled across a clip of a CubCrafters Carbon Cub skimming a gravel bar along the Salmon River, its prop kicking up dust as it settled in under 150 feet. The pilot, grinning ear to ear, hopped out with a fishing rod and disappeared into the pines. “That’s flying,” Tom muttered, leaning closer to the screen. The next weekend, he drove to a local fly-in, where he watched STOL planes dance on grass strips and chatted with pilots who spoke of mountain airstrips like they were sacred ground. He was hooked—he wanted in.
Getting started wasn’t glamorous. Tom’s 172 could handle some backcountry, but its tricycle gear and modest climb rate weren’t ideal for the tight, rugged spots he dreamed of. He enrolled in a tailwheel course, grinding through hours in a beat-up Piper Cub until his landings stopped bouncing like a kangaroo. “You’ve got to feel the plane, not just fly it,” his grizzled instructor barked after a particularly sloppy rollout. Next came a backcountry flying seminar, where he learned short-field tricks, high-altitude math, and how to pack a survival kit—lessons that felt more like adventure prep than aviation school. He traded the 172 for a used Kitfox, a lightweight STOL rig he spent months tweaking in his garage, adding tundra tires and a beefier prop. “It’s not pretty,” he told a friend, “but it’ll get me there.”
His first backcountry trip was to Idaho’s Johnson Creek—a 3,550-foot runway nestled between peaks, tame by STOL standards but a leap from his asphalt comfort zone. The approach was a wake-up call: a steep descent through a valley, wind swirling off the ridges, the Kitfox bucking like a bronco.
He nailed the landing—barely—touching down in 200 feet with his heart hammering. Stepping out, he was hit by silence so deep it felt alive, broken only by the rush of a nearby creek. No traffic, no chatter, just him and the wilderness. He pitched a tent under the wing, cooked a trout he’d caught, and slept to the sound of wind in the pines. “This is what I’ve been missing,” he whispered to the stars.
That trip cracked something open in Tom. Backcountry flying wasn’t just a new skill—it was a lens. At home, he’d been a numbers guy, steady but detached, coasting through life with a quiet discontent. The wilderness stripped that away. Every flight demanded focus—reading terrain, gauging winds, knowing his Kitfox’s limits down to the ounce. A sloppy approach to a 500-foot gravel bar didn’t just bruise his ego; it could bend metal or worse. “You can’t half-ass it out there,” he told his wife, Lisa, after a close call with a gusty crosswind. “It forces you to show up.” And show up he did, shedding the autopilot apathy of his old flying days for a razor-sharp edge that made him a better pilot overnight.
But the change ran deeper than stick-and-rudder skills. The quiet of the backcountry—hours alone with nothing but the hum of his engine and the vastness of the wild—rewired him. At Big Creek one weekend, he landed beside a retired bush pilot named Cal, who shared a thermos of coffee and stories of hauling supplies to remote villages. “Flying’s not about the plane,” Cal said, squinting at the horizon. “It’s about what it shows you.” Tom started seeing it: the fragility of a riverbed airstrip after a rain, the patience it took to wait out a storm, the humility of relying on nature’s whims. He began packing out trash left by campers, checking on isolated strips for erosion—small acts that felt bigger than his old, self-contained life.
Back in Boise, Lisa noticed it first. “You’re softer now,” she said one evening, watching him sketch a flight plan to a new strip. “Not weak— softer.” He’d stopped snapping at petty frustrations, like traffic or a jammed printer. At work, he listened more, barked less. When a coworker lost a parent, Tom didn’t just sign the card—he dropped off a meal, something he’d never have done before. The backcountry had taught him presence—how to be fully in a moment, whether wrestling a plane through a canyon or sitting with someone’s grief. “I used to fly to escape,” he admitted to Cal over a crackling campfire months later. “Now I fly to connect.”
The Kitfox became his bridge. He joined the E3 Aviation Association after stumbling across their SkyShare platform (www.e3aviationassociation.com), a goldmine of backcountry strips mapped by pilots like him. SkyShare led him to hidden gems—a 600-foot dirt patch in Utah, a lake shore in Montana—each trip a lesson in guts and grace. The E3 membership sweetened the deal with webinars on STOL techniques and a community that swapped tips like old friends. “Found a strip on SkyShare, landed it thanks to an E3 guy’s notes,” he bragged to Lisa. “It’s like having a co-pilot who’s already been there.”
E3 Skyshare
One summer day, Tom landed at a gravel bar along the Middle Fork of the Salmon, a spot so remote his phone showed no bars. He killed the engine, stepped out, and stood still as the quiet swallowed him. A year ago, he’d been bored, circling the same old airports, a man drifting through the sky and life. Now, he was here—tundra tires caked with mud, hands steady from months of practice, heart full from the wild’s unexpected gifts. The backcountry hadn’t just made him a better pilot, with skills honed sharp as a blade. It had made him a better person—grounded, awake, alive in ways he’d never imagined. As he cast a line into the river, the Kitfox glinting behind him, Tom grinned. This wasn’t just flying. This was living.