Wind, Sand and Stars

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1940) is best loved for his exquisite fable The Little Prince, but he also wrote one of the greatest true adventures, Wind, Sand and Stars (1940), an exciting poetic, philosophical memoir. Saint-Exupéry’s flights in the 1920s and 30s took him across the Pyrenees, Andes, and the Sahara in a tiny plane that would sometimes conk-out “with a great rattle like the crash of crockery.” There are remarkable descriptions of flying among waterspouts in a typhoon and his survival after a crash in the desert (which inspired The Little Prince).

In the sky a thousand stars are magnetized, and I lie glued by the swing of the planet to the sand. A different weight brings me back to myself…Behind all seen things lies something vaster; everything is but a path, a portal or a window opening on something other than itself.

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3 Responses to “Wind, Sand and Stars”

  1. Claire Beynon Says:

    Thanks for this, Raymond – a new title to me. And a fantastic quote indeed.

    Do you by any chance have a copy of the book you might be willing to lend to a friend (or can the copy pictured here be found in our local library?).

  2. Raymond Says:

    I lent mine to someone long ago but the public library has a new revised edition.

  3. Claire Beynon Says:

    PS. Great link to National Geographic’s list of Extreme Adventures, too ; )

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