On flying

I'm so glad I was born in a century of airplanes. I love to fly: I love airports, with their marvellous array of people; I love boarding a plane and getting all cozy with my few essential items (book, writing implements, bear) and the knowledge that I have nothing to do but sit and watch and read and write for the next hour or more; I love lifting off, getting faster and faster and then suddenly realizing that you're actually being supported by nothing more than air and physics. And I love how different the earth becomes when you're separated from it.

Something that struck me, as I was in the air today, is how much less interesting everything on the ground becomes. A rock quarry, which is a stunning sight from the ground, becomes just a grey hole in the ground when you're in an airplane. The effect varies, depending on what you're looking at-- trees are still pretty great, especially when they're turning colors (though I like them best when they're bare and they look like soft brushes from the sky). And rivers are awesome. But as cool as it is to see a forest from miles above, looking like it's part of a model train set, it's about a million times cooler to see it from a few inches away.

This is something that's been dawning on me recently, as I spend lots of time with small children. I'd forgotten how important and fascinating nature is when you're a child: not Nature in any big metaphysical sense, but just common everyday nature like blades of grass and bits of bark. I used to know all the different kinds of grasses and wildflowers that grew in my yard-- sometimes their names, but always their colors, and where they grew, and what they looked like when you took them apart. My friend and I would collect berries and leaves and acorns, and set up a market with them... we'd grind things into paste, we'd build tiny forts out of sticks. That was nature.

So yesterday, I was outside with the kids and looking at a tree whose peachy-yellow leaves have almost all fallen. And I noticed it had buds, and little fresh brown twigs growing out of its branches. And I was fascinated by them: there are so many shapes and smells and textures in the world that we forget about as adults.

But I was talking about flying. I find the landscapes, as seen from the air, interesting for a few minutes, especially when we're lifting off or landing and the perspective is continually changing. But what I really love, what I look forward to every trip and what makes me thank God that I was born in an age of airplanes, are the skyscapes. Just think: five hundred years ago, no one except a few mountain-dwellers knew what clouds look like from above. And what they missed! what plains of snowy whiteness, what cities and mountains piled high, struck gold and blue by the sun! There is nothing, my friends, no sight on the planet, that I love as much as I love the sight of clouds spread out below me, with all their textures and shadows and impossibly inviting depths.

I must say I've never entirely gotten the "every cloud has a silver lining" thing. I'm sure, like most old sayings, it began with a real-life, observable phenomenon. But I've never seen anything on a cloud which I'd call a silver lining. No, my friends, I don't draw a lot of comfort from the silver linings that folk wisdom tells me are there. What every cloud has is an upper side: and it is shining and glorious in the light of the sun. I may not see even a glimpse of it, but on an overcast day I know it is there, and that one of these days I'll be up there again, on the right side of the clouds, where all is light.