My Bush Plane’s Engine Quit Over the Alaska Wilderness With a Travel Writer in the Passenger Seat. We Had Four Days to Get Out

“I was running from something,” she said, over the noise of the rotors. “From the idea of staying anywhere long enough to care about it. About anyone.”

She grabbed my jacket with both hands.

“And then you landed a plane on a rock and fed me fish for four days, and now I’m in trouble.”

I kissed her right there on the gravel bar with the helicopter blades roaring and a very young National Guard medic trying hard to look somewhere else.

The emergency evacuation cost was covered by her travel insurance. My aviation insurance paid to have the Beaver flown out by helicopter and rebuilt. My insurance agent said it was the best-documented forced landing he’d ever seen, mostly because Jenna had photographed every single minute of it.

Her magazine story ran in November.

It wasn’t about the lodge.

It was called “Four Days on a Gravel Bar,” and it was the most-read article the magazine published that year.

The last line said: “I went to Alaska to write about the wilderness. I found a home instead.”

She moved to Talkeetna in the spring. She’s writing a book now, at a desk by the window of my cabin, looking at the lake and the mountain.

The Beaver flies again. Jenna sits in the passenger seat on every flight.

She still writes things in her notebook when she looks at me.

She still won’t tell me what they say.

Could you fall in love in four days? Tell me in the comments.