Rob Albright flew low over the Assabet River and the wildlife refuge. With the sun settling in for the evening, its golden glare accenting the green forests and winding river, it seemed he was gliding through a painting.

Nothing stood between him and the scenery but the lens of his helmet.

He hung a few hundred feet above ground in a small cart. Keeping him afloat was only the cloth stretched across his wings and a snowmobile-sized engine.

Albright had done this hundreds of times before. But flying hasn’t lost its charm. As he glided through the air, he spoke about his aircraft, giddy enthusiasm stitched into his voice.

“For me, I can’t not do this,” said Albright, who has been flying for almost 35 years. “This is in my blood.”

He was flying a trike: a three-wheeled, open-aired cart attached to a propeller and wings. As other pilots watched from the ground, Albright swooped over the grassy expanse of Crow Island, touched the ground for less than a second and took off over the mills of Maynard.

“Being out in the open air, it almost feels like it would to be a bird,” he said, describing the craft as a motorcycle with wings. “I enjoy the slowness and the vision that comes with flying [trikes.]”

A resident of Stow, Albright was introduced to flying by a friend who visited him in 1973. That friend had an 18-foot bag on the roof of his car.Curious, Albright asked about it: In the bag carried a hang glider, an uncommon craft in the early 1970s.

Albright brought his friend to Nashoba Valley, where he watched him step off the mountain.

Determined to try it himself, Albright bought a glider and traveled to Colorado to experiment. Little did he know that he would be hooked for the rest of his life.

Albright purchased Crow Island in 1983 to pursue his passion. Since then, the property has become a haven for alternative aircraft.

A circus of colorful flying machines lines his hanger: from ultralight trikes to powered hang gliders to Flightstar sport planes. Pilots come from all over the Boston area to fly at Crow Island, a grassy field at the end of a mile-long dirt road.

“There is no other place like this to fly,” said Jay Nitenson, a business owner in Stoughton who has been coming to Crow Island since 2001. “I like to come out here because it is something I can do and not think about anything else. Here, I am not satiated with the demands of everyday life.”

Albright, who tries to fly three or four times a week, said that flying is like therapy.

“When business owners like Jay and I go home, the phone is constantly ringing,” said Albright, who owns a business designing adventure courses at local schools. “Flying is a release from that.”

Like athletes who go a few days without training, too long without flying can cause withdrawal, Albright said.

After nearly two decades, ultralights have not reached the popularity of other extreme sports or flying-related activities. But Albright said the people who want to know about ultralights, find out about it.

Trikes were popularized in the Hollywood movie Fly Away Home in which a young girl and her father train a flock of geese to migrate to a sanctuary in the United States. The film is based on the real-life experiences of a Canadian inventor and ultralight aircraft hobbyist who led a flock of Canada geese on a successful winter migration from Ontario to Virginia.

According to Albright, he owned one of the first trikes in New England.

Albright has taken hundreds of first-time flyers for flights above Crow Island. But only those with flying in their blood will return for more flights.

As he cut through the air on a warm June evening, the craft moved with a sense of flawless. Despite hanging more than 200 feet above ground with minimal equipment, the trike flew with the control of a car.

“This is almost 800 times safer than planes,” Albright said, “mainly, because we only fly in good weather. There’s no better way of saying this, but these are fun.”