Author of ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull' returns to Scottsbluff

SCOTTSBLUFF, Neb. — A recent stop in Scottsbluff, Neb., was not Richard Bach's first.

The renowned author, perhaps best known for “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” has been stopping in Scottsbluff for more than 30 years.

Bach spent a night in the Panhandle city because the plane he flies, a Lake LA-4 Amphibian, is not designed to fly at high altitudes. He wanted to cross the Rockies in the cool of the morning when the plane operates best.

“It (being a pilot) teaches you respect for this country, this beautiful, wonderful high country that is breathtakingly beautiful, but look out, there's dragons in the hills there for the airplanes,” he said regarding the ever-changing weather conditions and winds.

Flying is a big part of his life, and one of the biggest influences came from a seagull named Jonathan Livingston.

“When I was a kid I'd go out — I grew up in Southern California — and there was some breakwater that led out into the sea, and you could climb out on these huge boulders and hide yourself in there and after a while the seagulls would forget you were there,” Bach recalled. “They would come along gliding on the lift that the wind would make … you were down there, and you could hear the sound of the wind over their wings.

“That sound, there was something magical about it.”

That sound stayed with him. Years later, Bach said he experienced something as a starving writer that was somehow connected to that earlier experience. He heard something that sounded like a voice say, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” and he said he had no idea what that meant.

The “weird” experience continued, and he saw himself in flight.

“And Jonathan Livingston Seagull was my attempt to write this movie that I saw in front of me in my own words … it was like a dream. … I wrote as fast as I could, in green ballpoint pen, until my wrist was tired,” and then the vision of the little bird disappeared, and Bach said he had to come up with an ending.

After writing, editing and starting over numerous times, Bach said he couldn't find an ending, so he just put it away.

“Eight years later, I was in Iowa and woke up from a dead sleep and came up with the end of the story and how it had to go on from there.”

But the best-selling novel was almost never published, Bach said.

After receiving 18 rejections for his little story, he received two pieces of mail one day; one was from his agent in New York City saying he had done everything he could to get the book published. The other was a request from another publishing company asking for any unpublished works.

As they say, the rest is history.

“My life seems to be guided by odd events, but aviation has always been the thread.”