What a mid-air emergency in a small plane taught me about travel and life.

There are certain phrases I never expected to hear a pilot say. Things like, “Uh oh” and, “What do you think I should do?” but that was before I dated a man with a pilot’s license.

Though more than a decade has passed since the incident, I still sometimes find myself with sweaty palms midflight: during a windy and aborted descent to Milos via Athens, Greece; amid a stomach-churning patch of turbulence before alighting in the Faroe Islands; or when experiencing the awe of rounding the Himalayas to a blind runway in Bhutan. In all of these moments, I returned to solid ground. Setting off on an adventure is never without its risks, a spectrum ranging from mild discomfort to mortal peril. That variety offers lots of l

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