“I wish you’d tell me about the difficulties under which the mail is carried, in winter and summer. You see, the American people have no way of knowing just what you pilots are up against. The weather, for instance.” [Illustration: Pilot Lester F. Bishop] “Well, it does get pretty bad. Take the day that came near being my last on earth. I left Salt Lake for this field at 7.30 in the morning. A full-sized blizzard was blowing, and the thermometer was below zero. I was flying low under the clouds, clearing mountain peaks by about two hundred feet, when I came to Porcupine Ridge. Suddenly, without any apparent reason, the machine settled. I guess I must have run into one of those winds that flow down the side of a mountain like a waterfall. Anyway, before I could attempt a right or left turn, or even throttle the motor, the machine dropped to a sloping ridge, the landing gear collapsed, and the wrecked craft slid on its fuselage almost to the top of the boulder-strewn ridge before it came to a stop. “Here I was, thirty-five miles north of Salt Lake and eighty miles to the eastward. I was twelve miles from a telephone, and thirty miles from a railroad. The only house I had ever seen from the air was six miles distant. The ridge on which I stood was almost 10,000 feet high and almost inaccessible. I couldn’t see fifty feet in that storm, so I stripped the compass from the wreck. With my traveling bag in one hand and a pair of trousers wrapped about the other to help support my weight on the snow, and with bits of clothing wrapped about my feet to act as snowshoes, I started on my journey toward civilization. “Soon I was floundering in snow up to my waist. I stumbled along all that day, all that night, and at daybreak came to the edge of the woods. The going was slow and tiresome. Frequent stops for rest were necessary. During these times I could feel my feet getting numb. But I carried a map of the country in my head, and knew there was a barn about three miles ahead. I struggled toward it all that day, while the blizzard raged and blotted out everything at times. By noon I was progressing at a snail’s pace; my leg muscles almost refused to function. About three o’clock I came close enough to the barn to see that there was no house, but it was clear now, and I could see one about three-quarters of a mile farther on. During all this time I was very weak, for I had eaten nothing in almost thirty-six hours. “At dusk I came to the house, and they took me in, rubbed my frost-bitten feet with snow, and filled me with warm food and hot coffee. After struggling through snowdrifts for thirty-six hours without food or drink, you can imagine that I was pretty tired. I was. I hit that bed so hard that I slept almost twenty hours. I didn’t wake up until far into the next afternoon.