08 - Leigh Coates
43 minutes reading
I remember the first time I ever flew. It was a 50-minute trip from Budapest to Prague when I was still in elementary school. Meaning the 1980’s. A memorable trip, because the little plane got into stormy weather and fell 8 meters. Which was basically a hiccup – I feel that hiccup every time I drive on Iowa’s roads. But up there in the air it was enough for the stewardess to trip and throw her tray of these little cognac cherry bonbons in the air. And I, as a resourceful Hungarian kid, spent the minutes afterwards picking up as many bonbons as I could while others were busy screaming and holding onto their seats.
Later I dreamed about becoming a stewardess myself to be able to see some of the world, which would’ve been impossible on my own budget. But while I was dreaming about it, I grew too old, there is not any nicer way to say it, so I had to let it go.
Thanks to Covid and the extremely long trips between Iowa and Budapest, today I don’t even want to think about commercial flying. The last time I flew was in November, 2020, and even if there are a few things for me to still settle in my mother country, I have not been able to convince myself to get on a plane to fly there ever since. Maybe later.
This lady, however, the one I am about to introduce you, well, she is just the opposite. She spends every minute she can up in the air. Mind you, she has her own vehicle to do that, a beautiful, Christmas decoration-like chopper she is in total control of when flying it. It is just her, the copter, the scenery and the weather. Even our dates for the interview were – this is hilarious – selected based on the weather. The rainier the conditions forecasted, the bigger the chance for a lengthy phone call.
She is a superhero, a completely unique creature, a lover of aircrafts, with a life she established for herself full of excitement and adventure – a little blonde bomb of energy, peace, joy and a huge-huge heart for flying, nature, and her sweetheart, partner in crime, Mike.
Meet Leigh Coates, the Attagirl for the month of August, and have a little taste of freedom as she understands it. I promise when you stop reading, you will feel the adrenaline and the desire to look up at least a few things she talks about here.
Created with love – read with delight.
Hello Leigh. Welcome to be Attagirl, I am thrilled to have you here.
Thank you, Kami, my pleasure to be here. Where do we start?
Well, Attagirls are usually asked to talk about their childhood first, their circumstances, which I believe has a huge impact, one way or another, on the direction we take when dipping toes into independent decision making. So tell me about who you were as a little girl.
OK, well the story really needs to start with my parents. My mom was adopted and was raised in a loving but very poor and deeply religious family whose motto was the Lord will provide. In search of alternative schooling, which was all the rage back in the 1960’s, they sent her to a boarding school in Mexico when she was 14. While the people running the school had good intentions, they had an extremely strict regime, and became more like a cult, or a commune, rather than a school.
My father, who came from a more affluent family, landed in the same school at 18 years old, after going AWOL during the Vietnam war. Young Beth and Bob were immediately drawn to each other and as the institute was strictly against any kind of fraternization: no dating, kissing or even holding hands out of matrimony, they chose to get married at a very young age. I was born soon after, as the school also had a strict rule against the usage of birth control. My Mom was a bit of a rebel and shared with me that once she learned of it, she actually smuggled birth control in for her and the other ladies. But anyway, you can see how it was more of a commune, and hence I was essentially a product of that. They were living in a primitive camp outside of Ensenada at the time of my birth.
Oh wow! Not a usual story.
No, not usual at all. In this commune you had to figure out on your own how to live, you were forced to be sort of self-reliant, live off the land, milk the goats, collect fresh water, etc. – learn to survive. It was a camp-style gypsy life, and the school moved often. Mostly around different places in Baja, but also Belize, where my little brother was born; Guatemala and we even lived on a tugboat in the Sea of Cortez.
So that is how it all began, with my parents parenting two children while they were hardly grown themselves, in a strict commune, trying to figure out life for themselves, moving all the time.
Seems like no deep roots were grown anywhere in your early life.
Exactly. When I was 3, my parents decided to move back to the States. My brother was born with hydrocephalus and needed better medical care, so we settled down in Maryland, where my mother’s parents lived. Another alternative type of living situation, in fact the community was called The School of Living. I remember going to community yoga classes with my mom and making peanut butter in the community mill. This is also where my dad learned his trade as an arborist while working with one of the community members there, a wonderful man named Bill Anneker, who had an off-grid round yurt-type home with an indoor bean bag swing and super thick, soft carpet. I would stand on his hands, acro yoga style, and he taught me how to do somersaults and cartwheels. His wife, Margret, read us books and fed us warm soup. Wonderful people and wonderful memories. But again, my folks needed to find better medical help for my little brother and for financial reasons moved us all to Southern California where my dad’s parents lived. I was 5.
Quite a move, from East Coast to West Coast.
All I remember really is the airplane ride. I got to sit by the window and was in awe of looking down at the beautiful puffy white clouds. It was magical and must have planted the seed for my love of clouds and love of flying.
But anyway, California was the first of what felt like real life and witnessing real life challenges. We weren’t in the La La Land of alternative community living anymore. The struggles were real, and this is when my parents decided to divorce. My Mom moved next door into a small basement apartment and my Dad stayed in the small rented house. At first it was really no big deal to my 5-year-old self. I walked across the street to school each day, and after school I’d either go to Mom’s or Dad’s… didn’t matter, because they were next door to each other and across the street from school. Remember that at this point my Mom didn’t have any real world experience. She’d been in Mexico from the age of 14 and had never had a job, never driven a car, and really had no mentors or friends or family nearby to help with advice or guidance. So with our best interest in mind, and figuring we’d all live close for years to come, she had given my Dad legal custody of me and my little brother. She hadn’t considered that my Dad would meet up with his high school sweetheart, get married, and move us all off to Santa Fe, New Mexico. She was devastated.
Oh no!
As was I. I missed her desperately, but also wanted to embrace my new family unit. I had a new Stepmom, and stepsister who was my age, and we started school in a new place together. This new family started off well. We didn’t have a television, and we ate dinner together every evening and played cards and board games and other fun creative games like scavenger hunts. Things were good, but not for long… soon there was tension in my parents’ relationship and lots of fighting. They gave up their no-TV policy and Dad and Stepmom would eat and watch TV during dinner while us kids ate in the dining room by ourselves. We had some very strict rules and if we didn’t obey we went to bed without dinner.
What??
Yup, I believe she had good intentions and did her best to navigate running a blended family, but my Stepmother had some interesting ways of disciplining. Bedtime was 7 pm, and if we hadn’t had a bath, cleaned our room and washed/dried our hair by 5 pm, we were sent to bed without dinner. My stepsister and I actually kept dry dog food in our bunk bed as we went to bed hungry so often. One of the crazier ones that I can remember was when she kept us home from school one day and fed us candy for each meal until we threw up. This was the punishment for accepting a piece of candy from a school friend earlier…
I am so sorry, Leigh.
Naw, no family is perfect, and honestly I’m just sharing some of the things that stand out in my memory. There were some good times too. Fishing and camping and road trips and visiting the Grandparents: lots of love and learning and growing in there too.
But I definitely lived for my summers when I got to go visit my Mom in Southern California. I’m so proud of her and how she was able to pick up the pieces and find the strength to reinvent herself after losing everything she knew, divorce and losing her kids. She had put together an embellished resume and landed a job as a secretary at JPL [Jet Propulsion Labs], a very cool, hip, new school company that contracted with NASA. She was actually the first secretary to have an office computer! This was a big deal back in the 1970’s. And she found community in the new age of disco dancing.
Summers with her were magical. She saved every penny she could to buy our plane tickets and make them possible and figured out so many ways to have fun on a very tight budget. I loved playing in the kitchen with her: baking, licking the spoon, cleaning up the mess, even scrubbing the floor was super fun. We’d spray water and soap everywhere and get on our hands and knees with 4 sponges… hahaha, who knew housework could be so much fun?! She taught me to make bread and how to sew and we went roller skating, disco dancing and we even went horseback riding, my favorite! Magical times, those summers.
Then I’d head back to Santa Fe for the school year and hang on to those summer memories as long as I could.
Santa Fe was interesting as an elementary and junior high school age kid. In a predominantly Hispanic community, I was the little white girl; so shy, quiet, and meek. I never got beaten up, but I sure worried about it as a real possibility. I kept to myself as much as possible. And I lived for my summers with Mom.
I can imagine.
I had always wanted to live with my Mom, but it seemed like a fairy tale that would never come true. And then when my Mom met my Stepdad in1986 – a super kind man, very resourceful and ready to take on the custody battle. My life changed drastically. It wasn’t easy on any of us, but we won, I packed up and moved to Southern California.
[Leigh audibly tears up when she talks about what comes next.] I remember distinctly when my Stepdad sat me down and said: you can be whatever, whoever you want. You can even change your name if you want. I think he meant my last name, but I took it to heart and decided to leave my shy, meek, quiet and lonely self behind and embrace my strong, powerful, confident inner self. That’s when my nickname, Leigh [sounding like Lee] came to life. Emily was my birth name and everyone shortened it to Em, Emma, Emmy, or M&M, all of which felt cute, and small, meek and maybe a little too feminine. I wanted to be strong and powerful, and when someone called me Lee one day, short for Emma Lee, I liked it, and it stuck. I experimented with spelling for a while: Ly, Lei, Lee, until I stumbled upon the actress from Gone with the Wind, Vivien Leigh, and there it was: Leigh was the new me! It was short, strong and powerful, just as I wanted, more fitting for the strong, confident young woman I was becoming.
This new family unit was full of love and possibilities. Mom, Stepdad, my brother and a new stepbrother my age. I was 15 and felt like the door to the world was now open to me. I became curious and tried everything. I took dance classes, got a mountain bike, went hiking, swimming, jumped off the bridge into the lake – so many new experiences and I was loving it! Financially we were still very poor, but being very resourceful, my Stepdad was a private pilot and one day said: Let’s go for a flight!
Why do I feel that this is an important moment…? What have your eyes got open to?
Freedom. Wow, total and utter FREEDOM! It was magical to pull the yoke back and slowly climb and look down at the little houses getting smaller and to see the little cars on the freeway, stuck in traffic, and I was above it all! Freedom, it was liberating! It felt like having a superpower, like Superwoman. Then and there I knew it was for me. I knew I had to do it.
So that was decided for you at a pretty early age, huh? To fly?
Yes. I got bitten by the bug, had to do it. I worked at least three jobs while in high school and saved every penny for flight lessons. It was not easy and took me 3 years just to get my private pilot certificate. I flew out of Camarillo and Van Nuys, one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country. My Dad back in Santa Fe was inspired to see my aviation journey and when I graduated high school, he offered to help me finish by matching every future dollar I spent on flight lessons. He was recently divorced and in hopes of mending our relationship, I moved back to Santa Fe and continued my training. I got my private ASEL [a license for airplanes with single engines landing only on land] and then started on my instrument training, but then…
Oh my god, but then???
… I got a bit sidetracked. Haha, I was waiting tables at the Royal Buck Restaurant, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and the owners also had a ski shop… So one of the perks of the job was free snowboard rentals. I met a great crew of snowboard instructors who saw me struggling to figure it out and took me under their wing.
I loved it! I ended up snowboarding every single day and spending all my money on lift tickets until I got offered a job as an instructor. I was like sure, I can barely get off the lift without falling over, but free season pass, yes please, sign me up!
Santa Fe Ski Basin was a great place to learn, but I wanted more. I kept seeing Breckenridge Colorado in the Snowboarding mags, so I packed up and drove there. Stood outside the post office and asked every single person who walked by if they knew of a room for rent. It was about 100 people before one lady looked at me and said, Actually, yes! I have a small room, no furniture, no window, but it’s right by the ski lifts and you can rent it for the winter. I took a ridiculously bad job in a cafeteria at the top of Peak 9, for my season pass, and survived on free happy hour food using my fake ID. I think I was 19 at the time… haha, good times! When the season was over, a good friend and I decided to chase the snow to the southern hemisphere. New Zealand! I had just enough money to buy a plane ticket plus $1,500 that converted to $3,000 kiwi dollars – just enough to buy a season pass to Coronet Peak and the Remarkables out of Queenstown. Those were some cool days and I made some amazing lifelong friends. I did two seasons in Breckenridge, 4 seasons in Queenstown, and I planted roots in Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe for 10 years. I got sponsored, went pro and ended up traveling and racing boardercross. Really, really good years.
Oh, fun! But what happened to flying? It became unimportant, too?
Life had taken a different turn. I completely forgot about flying. It was all about snowboarding.
You never wanted to lead a conventional life, go to college, have a job, anything like that?
I actually don’t even think I knew what a conventional life was. Nobody in my family had gone to college and I really didn’t understand that it could be a possibility or how to go about doing it. Let alone paying for it. My Dad is a tree trimmer, my Mom a secretary, my Stepdad a handy man.
But yes, I did almost go that route. In my senior year of high school my best friend and I had talked about moving to San Diego and going to Mesa, the Junior College there… probably because there were cute surfer boys who went there, haha! But that was one of those crossroad moments, a single moment that changed the course of my life.
May I ask what it was?
Trigger warning, but here’s my Me Too Story! We went to San Diego to tour the school and find housing. Somehow I ended up alone with one of the potential future roommates and when I turned down his advances, he tried to force himself. It was terrifying but I was able to get away and ran down the beach. I screamed as he attacked me and threw me to the ground, held me by the neck and ripped at my clothes. Luckily someone on a bicycle heard me and started yelling and I was just barely able to get away. It was a violent attack and definitely made me more aware and wearier of my safety and surroundings. Also one of the most challenging times of my life was pressing charges and looking at his pleading sorrowful innocent looking face in court. But learning from his other roommates that many a girl had come back from a walk with him looking disheveled and out of sorts gave me the strength I needed to prosecute.
Oh my, I am so sorry to hear this. Thank you, it was an awful experience, but it made me stronger as a person and it also helped pivot my path to go back to New Mexico to take my Dad up on the offer to finish my private pilot rating. And that’s where I found snowboarding. So, in retrospect, I’m grateful. I wouldn’t be who and where I am today without that experience and who knows how many more women he would have raped if I hadn’t helped put him in jail.
So, Lake Tahoe, pro snowboarder, travelling.
Yesss, wonderful time of my life! I love that place, the people, the joy of being outside in the elements and the physicality of honing my sport and going to so many amazing places: Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, all over the States. I would have kept going, but I had an accident.
You had a bad fall?
Lots of falls and injuries from snowboarding, but the one that ended my career was actually a car accident, a hit-and-run. We were road tripping home from a contest in Big Bear, headed back to Tahoe and parked in a parking lot in Apple Valley. I was grabbing my wallet from the trunk of our car and a drunk/drugged driver backed into me, pinning me between the two cars. I couldn’t believe what was happening and all I could do was scream and bang on the car with my hand to get her to stop reversing. Only one leg was caught, and I remember just flexing my leg as hard as I could to try to protect my knee. She finally realized she had hit something and drove forward. She actually got out of the car and looked at me as I fell to the ground with horror on her face, like “what have I done?!” and then her passenger yelled at her to get back in and they drove off. A witness tried to chase them but the passenger waved a gun, so he gave up. He came to tell me at the hospital, what a nice guy. The crazy thing is they had no license plate; it was a beaten-up old Chevy Chevette, totally not street-legal, but there they were, high as a kite and driving. The police also came to the hospital and said that the security cameras in the parking lot were not operational. Hit-and-run – and they were never found. Another life changing moment for me, a Y in the road.
Wow, Leigh, in all honesty luck does not seem to have been a good friend to you!
That one was tough. I had 3 broken bones and 2 torn ligaments and had to wait over a month for the bones to heal before the first surgery for the ACL. I moved home to my Mom and Stepdad’s place to rehab and heal. I felt all my dreams slipping away and was feeling quite lost in life. I remember hobbling into the pharmacy on my crutches, feeling quite sorry for myself, when I looked over and saw a girl my age, also on crutches, but missing her leg from the knee down. It struck me immediately, almost took my breath away, like a slap in the face, and I realized I was not unlucky, but in fact I was lucky! I was involved in a traumatic accident, yet I was fine! I still had all my limbs, I had people who loved me, who took care of me, I had had an amazing career and I still had a whole healthy life full of possibilities in front of me. That really was the moment when I found gratitude. I am not a victim but a victor.
Life is funny, huh? Some seemingly minor moments are able to make a 180-degree turn in our thinking!
So true! That was an important, seemingly minor yet such a profound moment in my life. Back in Lake Tahoe I still did some recreation snowboarding for a couple of years and had another surgery, but my knee was never the same and just too much pain, and I knew I’d never be able to snowboard like I used to. So I said goodbye to my dreams of snowboarding in the Olympics.
A serious rerouting was needed, I guess.
Yes, I just didn’t know what that was. Until a friend who had moved to Hawaii mentioned that she was looking for a roommate. Boom! I had never been to the Big Island, but immediately knew it was the right place for me, so I packed up and moved across the Pacific Ocean.
Aww, Hawaii is a bucket list item of mine!
It’s a magical place, you would love it! I moved into this beautiful house, with a beautiful view of the Kona coast, most amazing sunsets ever, warm tropical breezes, smells of plumeria flower leis… just pure lovely Hawaiian dreaminess. One night we had a bunch of people over for a housewarming party. I was talking to one of my roommate’s friends, a super cool looking guy with tattoos and a goatee and when he told me he was a helicopter pilot, I was like wow! I used to be a pilot, I mean I have my private ASEL but haven’t flown in over a decade. He then came clean and told me he was a student helicopter pilot. I hadn’t even thought about flying again. In my mind ,that ship had sailed. But right there, in that moment, a fire was lit. He told me about the helicopter school right at the Kona Airport. “You just get a loan for $50K, you go at your own pace, but it usually takes a year to get all 5 ratings, including instructor rating, then the school hires you as an instructor, you teach until you get 1000 hours, and then you go get any job you want, because all the Vietnam pilots are retiring and there are lots of job openings.” And I was like, where do I sign?!
You really sound like instead of planning you made the most out of every opportunity that came.
Yes, I was, and still am a person who chooses living in the present moment, I am not worried about the future because it always works itself out. This way, however, I remain free , first, of commitment and, second, to choose whatever I feel like instead of what I have to do. This, just like my constant location change, must come from all the moving in my early years, you must be right when you say the circumstances of our early years have a huge impact on who we become as an adult. When I think back, I must admit I have traveled, changed locations so often, and do so even today, that it might sound unusual. I do not like tying myself down with promises or commitments, I prefer keeping the kind of flexibility that allows me to be the person I am without breaking any obligations or hurting any feelings.
Sounds pretty free, but I have to ask: do you think making ad hoc decisions defines you as reckless a little bit?
Haha, good question. Some may see it as so, but I feel very fortunate to have always been kind of footloose and fancy free. I’ve hitchhiked around New Zealand and done other kinds of traveling without a real plan. I’ve definitely put myself into vulnerable positions. But taking that risk has also opened my world to so many experiences that I am so grateful for. Yes, as I shared before, I’ve had a few bad experiences too: the attempted rape and the hit-and-run car accident and I’m sure countless other little things I can’t even think of at the moment, but overall, in 51 years of wild gypsy lifestyle, I wouldn’t change a thing. They are all experiences that made me who I am today.
And now here you are in Hawaii: a brand-new environment and this new idea of going to the heli school on Kona.
Yes, when this guy – Tattoo Guy – had told me how the helicopter school and training worked, I got so excited. I called my best friend over and told her the story the way he had told me, and literally the next day we both walked into helicopter school.
Grabbing the opportunity!
As always. I was working at the Four Seasons at the time, serving in their fine dining restaurant and making decent money, so I actually paid as I went through school. I don’t like being in debt. I like to be free as a bird, and debt always seemed like a freedom killer to me. But I went through school faster than I could afford, so I caved in the end and took a loan for 30K so I could finish quickly and get on with my new career. I was already 31 by that point and felt I didn’t have time to dilly-dally. It went basically just how Tattoo Guy said. It took 13 months to get all 5 ratings, 8 months working as an instructor to get to 1000 hours, then my first real commercial part 135 [a certificate for a company to operate as a non-scheduled air charter] carrier job for 3 months till I had the turbine experience needed to get the real job that paid enough to pay off my loan and buy a condo. I paid off the condo loan in 5 years. Again, I don’t like being in debt. But as I’ve gotten older and a little more educated on how our system works, as an entrepreneur, debt can be a really good thing. Just have to play the interest rates right and find the right investments and tax write-offs.
And you are not the first Attagirl to say that…
I know!
What kind of jobs can you have as a helicopter pilot? And which are the ones that pay the best?
There is such a wide variety of types of jobs/missions in the helicopter industry. Pay depends on experience. Typically, the more streamlined your specialty is and how much experience you have in that niche will dictate the salary. Flying tours in Hawaii was very early in my career and a great learning experience at that time, but not super fulfilling for me. From there I ended up working in remote areas of Alaska and found my niche as a precision long line utility pilot doing mostly mineral exploration. Most of the contract jobs I was sent on were way out in the middle of nowhere basing out of a “man camp” basically glamping with a solid floor tent with a diesel stove/heater, a camp cook, outhouses and structured camp shower times. The work was moving and setting drills, fuel tanks, water lines, donage, and whatever materials they needed for the project. This type of contract work took me all over the great state of Alaska, working with geologists, biologist, archeologists, glacier scientists and other things like radio/cell repeater sites where I slung in fuel or solar panels, radio stacks, towers and dishes. I learned a lot and my skill set grew, figuring out remote logistics for fuel and other things like weather: rain, frost, fog, clouds are the fun stuff for me. It’s challenging and fulfilling work.
I did a short, 10-day job in the small town of Valdez, Alaska which is where I met my boyfriend. He’s a true Alaskan, he’s been here all his life and grew up hunting, fishing, boating and flying - all the hot guy stuff. I took him for a ride in the helicopter and he took me for a ride in his super cub bush plane. We’ve been each other’s co-pilots in life ever since… for 15 years now.
Remote field work was hard on the relationship, so in 2010 we and a partner decided to start our own company. We bought a helicopter, and I started working from my new home base where I finally grew some roots Valdez, Alaska. We built up the business over 10 years and in the end had 5 helicopters, a hangar, a fuel facility and a gift shop. A perfect opportunity came up in 2020 to sell the business and we collectively decided to cash out and enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Retired early, enjoying life, doing what we really truly love… and, yes, we kept one helicopter for ourselves, flying the Alaska mountains and exploring. Mike and I also bought a brand-new Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopter that we lovingly call the CandyCaneCopter for the super fun red and white high-vis paint scheme. It is easily recognizable and it’s amazing how many people spot us when we are traveling. We fly it all over North America: from Montreal, down as far as Dominican Republic and everywhere in between and on up to Alaska. It’s our new school version of barnstorming, only instead of sleeping in a farmer’s yard under wing, we stay with friends or hotels and take people for flights for free. I share it all on social media, mostly Instagram and Facebook, and daily in Stories. People reach out when they see we are in their area and we do our best to meet up with everyone we can. I get pictures sent almost daily when we are on the go, playing #ispythecandycanehelicopter.
Oh my, sounds so cool, you must come visit us here in Iowa, we have a huge backyard where your CandyCane Baby can rest while we are grilling a good steak or two, and you can stay with us! We could even get our small town involved for a day, I am sure they would be happy!
See, you understand how it works! We would love to visit you guys. I’ll just add you to my Foreflight [navigtion app] that helps remind me who is in an area as we fly through. There are 10,000 variables when traveling like this so I don’t commit to anything but as long as I get you in as a waypoint in my app, there will be some day in the future… maybe this year, or in 10, that we will come through.
Understood! You’re welcome any time, really. Now listen, lady. Driving a chopper must require insane focus and discipline, and courage when the unexpected (wind or precipitation or a bird or whatnot) happens. It is a lifestyle, I understand, but I also know that for such a dangerous lifestyle some kind of winddown is needed. At least that is how I imagine it. If so, what is it that you use to release the stress it generates?
It is not only the flying itself, that’s actually the easy part. But being out in the field and staying in different camps, everything is always changing, different people, different environments, it can all take a toll if you’re not careful. And yes, I have my methods to keep me grounded.
I’m listening!
Every time I showed up at a new camp, I would first go to my assigned tent and make it my own. I had a vision board that I actually packed around with me, and a bag of “feel goods” like a vanilla scented candle and a little box of happy quotes, and Yogi Tea, and of course my yoga mat. Camp life can be rough and self-care is often brushed aside. But it was important to keep myself grounded. I used a great little app called Yoga Downloads that had short, 20-minute yoga flows to guide me through a quick little practice. Some of the camps were too fast-paced for even a 20-minute practice, but many times I’d at least have some downtime out in the field with the helicopter while waiting for clients. I’d find a rock or tundra or someplace I could get a short little yoga practice in.
Yoga! When I was doing my prepping homework on you, I remember I found a lot of yoga-related references!
Haha, I am not surprised. I used to share a lot of yoga on my other social media page. Yoga is essential in my life. I suppose it all started in Maryland when I went to classes with my mother, when we first moved to the States. After that wherever I was, I sought out the local yoga classes. In Hawaii I had the great honor to practice with Norman Allen before he passed. If he accepted you as a student, you practiced with him for free – you only paid when you missed one. And when I was flying for work all the time, I practiced outside or on the helipad – that is how my HeliYoga movement was born. I would be waiting for my passengers, sometimes for many hours, so I started taking my yoga mat with me, or just Yoga Paws which are little grippies for your hands and feet so you can practice on any surface and have traction. I started participating in yoga challenges on Instagram, and soon began hosting challenges. In fact, I guided a year-long handstand challenge in which I would give a daily assignment towards the end goal of strengthening our handstands. An incredible community was formed. I feel unspeakably blessed to have connected with so many of my fellow hosts and participants from all around the world. We formed a super cool community, with many of them I keep in touch to this day. Yoga gives me strength and completely relaxes my body and mind, a very important aspect of my life.
Anything else that helped or helps you relax?
Yes, I believe in small daily habits. Every single day, usually in the shower, I take a short moment to stop everything and focus entirely on myself. I take a deep breath and close my eyes, wrap my arms around myself with a hand on each shoulder, bow my head and just give myself a big ol hug. I first started doing this when I showed up on a new contract job that felt a bit above my skill set and I was intimidated. That morning I gave myself a pep talk in the bathroom mirror, said to myself, “you’ve got this” and a self-hug – and it was so powerful. I have done that every single day since, and it works. My other daily habits are Nahli, a core cleansing exercise, I touch my toes every single day and I do a standing puppy pose against the wall. I’d like to say I have a daily meditation practice, but lately I have let that falter a bit. However, even just talking about it is a good reminder to find it again; even just 3 minutes a day of mindful meditation is a game-changer. I also love a good book to read, that’s always a lovely getaway.
What do you read?
As a really young kid, I used to read a lot. It was not rare that I read 2-3 books a day. A day! I loved Nancy Drew books, haha. I’m quite the detective as my boyfriend will tell you, he playfully calls me Leigh Five-O. That’s a whole other long story, but one time I sleuthed out a bad guy when he had robbed my neighbor’s in Hawaii and got him arrested. Turns out he was wanted for all kinds of awful crimes and I’m the one who spotted him and tailed him till the cops could get there.
But anyway, as I got older I got into philosophical books like The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, Celestine Prophecy, The Alchemist, Siddhartha, and my all-time game-changer book was Illusions, the travels of a reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. Richard Bach was a pilot himself who flew and barnstormed across America. Illusions was about him doing just that, but also learning that everything is truly an illusion and comes from the perspective of your own mind. You create your own reality. Reading that at a young impressionable age is probably why I’m doing this today.
Yoga, reading – anything else maybe?
As a young girl back in Santa Fe, my biggest comfort was my pet cat. He was actually a feral kitten that I had captured in a farmhouse barn that my parents let me keep. He slept on the foot of my bed with me all during the school year, and then he’d disappear while I was gone to California in the summer. Each fall when I returned, so would he. His unwavering love and companionship really helped me stay strong through those hard times.
Home life was tough, but school life was too. I was a good student as far as academics, but I was definitely a bit awkward and never felt like I really fit in. And even when I got to move to live with my Mom and Stepdad in Southern California, I was still the awkward outsider, especially because we were quite poor but lived in an area of a lot of new money. Everyone had the latest brand name clothes, and drove fancy cars, etc. I was like a poor little country bumpkin in the big fancy city, lol. But I was gathering strength and confidence at this point in my life and really just focused more on my passions, like dancing – I loooved dancing and took every class I could afford, modern dancing, ballet, jazz. I loved hiking and mountain biking, oh and sailing! My Stepdad and I did a lot of sailing together in a small 2-person sailboat called “Orange Juice” as it was painted bright orange… hmmm, probably why I painted my whole fleet of helicopters orange in recent years… just putting that together now, haha. Anyway, yes, I was a bit of a tomboy and loved everything outdoors.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
As a kid, I never really had a clear picture of what I would do, careerwise, except for the normal fantasy things like actress, singer, dancer, and so on. But I do remember, during a family road trip I saw this really cool looking lady truck driver at a gas station. She was so strong and confident, and she was driving that big wild looking tractor trailer all by herself, and she was getting paid to travel all over the country. Yes, I had a brief phase of wanting to become a truck driver, especially with all these commercials on TV for the Debbie Dootson Truck Driving school. But I never followed through on that one… fortunately, plus the flying bug caught me pretty early in life.
So what is it today that you do when you don’t fly?
Well I fly a lot, haha! My home base of Valdez, Alaska has some of the most beautiful flying conditions in the world. I love to dance my way around the mountain peaks, wispy fog layers and electric blue glacier ice. And being able to share it with other people is super rewarding… just seeing it through my passengers’ eyes sometimes brings me to tears. It’s surreal and honestly never gets old. When I’m driving to the airport in the morning and look out at the mountains, my heart starts to flutter and I get a little giddy. It’s absolutely magical. I like to fly to a mountain peak for some outdoor yoga, or hike the ridge, or take a picnic to a waterfall, or walk amongst the giant icebergs. Alaska’s summer is mesmerizing, but it is short and fleeting and I want to soak up every moment. I don’t like to be away during the three peak months, June, July and August. I try to share the magic on my social media pages, but it doesn’t always do it justice.
Your lifestyle sounds pretty healthy with all that hiking and yoga. Is it something you do consciously? You mentioned the importance of self-care earlier.
It’s pretty easy to eat healthy while we are in Alaska. We fish, shrimp and hunt for sustenance and prepare our meals at home including smoking and canning our own salmon. There are really no good restaurants in our small town, so we cook at home every night. Yoga and hiking keeps me fit and when we are traveling or wintering elsewhere, we join a gym and try to go daily. Yes, we do try to live a healthy lifestyle and keep the doctors away.
The time is coming for us to close down this conversation, unfortunately. But before we do that, please tell me about your beliefs and values, dreams and goals, for your retired years. What else is there for someone who seemingly has achieved everything?
Retired life is good. We are making a bucket list and have crossed a lot of the items them off this summer. Seemingly little things but big experiences, like flying to the North Slope of Alaska to see polar bears on the Arctic Ocean Sea ice, and the caribou, and muskox – wow, they are magnificent creatures! And we wanted to see the walrus haul-outs on the Aleutian Islands; the beach combing there was incredible, too. Just collecting experiences.
As far as beliefs I am not religious per se, but I'm definitely spiritual. I meditate regularly to stay tuned in with the energy of the Universe. I believe all beings are intrinsically good and I strive to spread joy and happiness and always be supportive and uplifting and help to better the world. Just be good, do good, don’t harm others. I think it can be quite simple really.
Well, Leigh, we have arrived to the point where I want you to share your life wisdom with the readers who may benefit from those - some sage thoughts deriving from your experiences.
Understanding that we are all the creators of our own experience is essential. No matter what happens in our lives, it’s our own choice how we react to it. Once we understand this, we become totally free. Two people can have the same exact experience but may perceive it completely differently. One may choose to feel like a victim, that someone else did something to them, while the other may choose to feel grateful for the experience and the opportunity to see an opening, another path laid out in front of them that they otherwise may not have seen. Perception is reality. You are the one to choose: do you choose to be a victim, or do you choose to be a victor?
I am so happy that I found you, Leigh, I can’t wait to meet you in person when your app spits out which could be a good time for you. You have established a magnificent life for yourself, by following an absolutely non-convenient, non-standard path full of actions played mostly by ear, making bold choices based highly on your gut feelings. Amazing, if you ask me. A great example for the readers to see that listening to our instincts can, true, put us into unexpected situations, but ultimately lead to freedom without error. Thank you for sharing good and bad, drawing a true picture of the road that has taken you where you are today. In your happy, free, flexible life.
Thank you so much for having me here, Kami. I feel honored and grateful for the chance to talk about all this, and I hope there will be at least one person who is inspired by my story and takes her fate in her own hands, risking the known for the unknown.
If you would like to find out more about Leigh, please click on the links below.
