Hig Takes Cima and Two Sheep Off the Canyon Strip in the Beast

Hig’s departure from the canyon in The Beast turns an improvised evacuation into a test of skill, nerve, and trust. With Cima beside him and two lambs secured behind the seats, he gets the plane off a runway the manual says is too short, then circles back across the Colorado River to collect Pops. Leaving the canyon is not simply a change of location: it means breaking from the life Pops has inherited and bringing the small, vulnerable animals along into an uncertain future.

Preparing the Aircraft and Its Passengers

Before the flight, Hig weighs the equipment that must go with them. He constructs a makeshift balance from a liter bottle, a five-gallon pail, a stick, and rope hung from a low branch beside the stream. The five-gallon pail holds forty pounds, allowing him to measure half that weight against the bottle and calculate the loads of the AR-15, Cima’s pack, his own pack, and the hose and hand pump. The calculation is practical, but the question of how much a lamb weighs makes the evacuation’s unusual cargo impossible to treat as mere baggage.

Hig and Cima weigh one lamb by wrapping it in a shirt sling and hanging it from the branch. They empty the pail until the two sides balance: the lamb weighs about seventeen pounds. Cima confirms that the pair they plan to take consists of a ram and a ewe. Hig compares their journey to Noah’s Ark, a comparison given literal shape by the sheep aboard an aircraft. He judges that the plane should manage the takeoff without Pops aboard, though he admits the result remains uncertain.

The runway is prepared by smoothing the ground and cutting the tall trees at its end. The book calls for a hundred more feet than the strip provides; Hig trusts the aircraft and the work they have done rather than treating that shortfall as resolved. The preceding evening, they load everything except the lambs. Cima sleeps in the fields among her animals, while Hig and Cima bring the two young sheep upstream on twine, carrying them up the tree ladder beside a small waterfall. Their mothers follow the bleating to the top of the field, confused, as the lambs are set down and adjust to the unfamiliar height.

The walk to the plane briefly loosens the scene’s tension. The lambs balk, pull ahead, and resist the people trying to guide them; the movement becomes an ongoing negotiation rather than a controlled march. Hig eventually carries his lamb. At The Beast, Cima expertly hogties both lambs, and they place them on their packs behind the seats. Hig gives Cima the checklist and asks her to serve as copilot. Their cooperation is essential: she is not simply being carried out of the canyon but taking part in the preparations and flight.

The Short-Field Takeoff

At daybreak the outside temperature reads fifty-two degrees. Hig welcomes the cool, dense air, taxis The Beast through the sage onto the newly cleared track, and turns at the east end to face west. The cedar woods ahead mark the limit of the meadow’s runway. Cima gives him a thumbs-up; Hig checks the trim, advances the throttle, and releases the brakes.

The plane rolls slowly at first, and Hig momentarily doubts that it will lift. As the runway rushes past, he keeps The Beast low, holding it only a few feet above the track to gain speed in ground effect. The trees loom directly ahead. Cima screams as Hig raises the Johnson bar and pulls back, bringing the plane sharply upward. The stall horn blares, the airspeed needle hovers at sixty, and the lambs make sounds that remind Hig of their mothers. The takeoff’s danger is measured in seconds and small margins: the aircraft must clear the trees without stalling.

Hig pushes the yoke forward to bring the nose nearly level and waits for the plane to accelerate. At sixty-five, The Beast flies level; the trees pass below, perhaps only two feet beneath the aircraft. It rolls over the next ridge about fifty feet above the trees, then descends along the other side. Hig and Cima have cleared the canyon strip, but the success is emphatically not a textbook takeoff. Its force comes from the gap between the manual’s requirements and the improvised flight that actually gets them airborne.

Cima, the Lambs, and a Changed Life

Once clear, Cima beams and pinches Hig’s arm. The lambs stop crying, raise their heads from the packs, and attend to the conversation, apparently accepting the flight as the next stage of an ordinary sheep’s life. Their calm does not erase what has happened: their mothers remain behind, and Hig has already registered the sadness of a world in which even a small rescue entails separation. The lambs are living passengers, not just supplies, and their presence makes the plane’s task resemble an ark in material as well as figurative terms.

The flight also carries Cima away from the canyon she shares with her father. Before leaving, Pops walks out of the canyon alone, carrying a light pack and rifle and closing the gate behind him. He leaves without ceremony, relinquishing the place associated with his parents and earlier generations of his family. The departure thus gathers two kinds of separation: the lambs are taken from their mothers, and Pops abandons the inherited life that had defined his own lineage.

Collecting Pops and Heading West

After crossing the Colorado River, Hig sees Pops sitting on his pack in the open, with his rifle between his knees. Hig lands and stops across from him. Pops climbs into the aircraft behind Cima, glances at the lambs, and recognizes the little airborne group as an ark. Cima closes the door, and Hig takes off again, this time heading west toward Grand Junction.

Pops’s place in the flight alters the meaning of the earlier departure. He first leaves the canyon on foot, apparently committed to a new life, then joins his daughter and the others rather than remaining behind. The plane has brought him out of the canyon without erasing the cost of leaving it: the gate is latched, the animals have been divided, and the family’s next destination lies beyond the familiar landscape. As Hig flies toward Grand Junction, the warm wind enters through the empty frame where Pops had shot out a window. The damaged aircraft, its improvised passengers, and its difficult departure carry the group forward together, but not into certainty.