On weekday mornings before the sun's first light, a column of shadows appears from the darkness. A quiet shuffling of feet and parsed breath fills the quiet morning air with its whispery meter. These are runners, children, all of them running forward for miles and yet going nowhere. This is their morning ritual.

The hangar was built along the banks of a creek that lay fallow during the summer months. Come winter, a muddy churn of rain and melting snow laps its banks. The flow might never cease were it not for the earthen dam a mile north of the hangar. In winter the dam's spillway stands like a jilted bride, cloaked in a shimmering veil of water, its base a flowing train of foam. In summer, the veil is lifted revealing a bumpy complexion of steel and pitted cement, cracked from winter's freeze and springtime melting.