Into The Wild

As diverse as the terrain they fly over, Alaska's bush pilots share the danger zone as their daily commute.

- Julia Boatman

THE TERM ‘BUSH PILOT’ conjures up images of rugged individualists flying de Havilland Beaver floatplanes into Alaska’s most remote and difficult terrain. Such intrepid 20th-century aviators as Don Sheldon and Carl Ben Eielson were cut from that cloth—their ample skill at dead reckoning a compensation for the lack of charts. “There’s a mystique to the bush pilot,” says Brant Smith, who has been flying into the Alaskan bush (generally defined as a region with no road access) since 2012. Smith, though, applies the moniker more readily to his predecessors who ventured heroically into the relative unknown. “Now, it’s an overused term. I don’t call myself a bush pilot, just someone who loves the experience.”