Tracing the Flight of the Beast in "The Dog Stars"
View north from Rollins Pass, CO. "The Dog Stars" is a terrific sci-fi book by Peter Heller. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, it tells the story of a survivor pilot who with his Cessna 182 Skylane, affectionately called the Beast, tries to make a difference. The author is himself a pilot and has made sure that all technical discussions are correct, down to the minutest detail such as pulling mixture control. We are not giving anything away by saying that the story begins at the Erie airport (EIK), which is just a few miles NW of Denver, CO. You learn that on the first few pages of the book. We are also not spoiling your reading of the book by saying that a trip going west from Erie across the Rockies becomes important. That trip intrigued us to the point where we drew the course on a Denver sectional, using the detailed narration in the book to identify waypoints. Now we are not going to tell what happens on that trip of the book and where it terminates. Instead, we