APRIL 28, 2021 – Over 19 months have passed since I’ve flown. Since I was 12, that’s the longest I’ve been grounded. When I do fly again, I’m sure the details of air travel will come flooding back, just as reality fills the room when I wake up from a very deep sleep.
One detail: the image of earth from cruising altitude. From seven miles up I’d ponder humankind’s marks on the planet—highways; cities; cultivation; high-tension powerline easements running miles one direction before turning another way; golf courses indistinguishable from ski areas because altitude erased topographical relief. Across the eastern half of the country, very little of the land below hadn’t been reshaped by civilization. Except . . . from 37,000 feet, I saw no movement, no actual signs of life way below.
Of course, one knew from having been down there, that it was filled with frenetic activity— unending, rushing streams of motor vehicles conveying goods and people; thousands of elevators ferrying people up and down tall buildings; millions of human beings scurrying about, living their lives, forming thoughts and expressing ideas—inside homes, schools, stores, offices, restaurants, factories, warehouses, public arenas, and laboratories and in open spaces under the very sky where I was flying high—along with tens of thousands of other people.
Yet all that could be detected from on high were stationary markings.
Aboard the aircraft, people appeared relaxed if not sedated. There were snoozers, readers, laptop laborers, and video watchers; an incessant talker or two, and aisle walkers between their seats and the lavatory; flight attendants dispensing snacks and beverages and an invisible cockpit crew that you hoped were awake at the switches, despite the auto-pilot. I always wondered who my fellow travelers were—their origins, destinies, interests, and business below. Inside each mind was a world unto itself, in various states of repose or . . . hyperactivity.
Then there was a graying man—more a kid than a grown-up—with nose pressed against the window, pretending he was an alien from the far side of the galaxy, in sub-orbital flight over this rare find—(another) planet showing signs of life.
During the time that I’ve been grounded, we’ve all been way too close—despite our isolation—from the noise and clutter of human activity, right down to the baffling firestorm over a microscopic virus . . . as invisible at ground zero as it is from an altitude of 37,000 feet.
It’s time, I think, to “disable all electronic devices” and contemplate (from the ground) the boundless sky, where silent water vapor forms into clouds amidst invisible air currents . . . and a miniature plane flies from horizon to horizon. And now that my wife and I are fully vaccinated, it’s time to . . . book a flight. Grayer than I was, I’ll again be that kid with (masked) nose pressed against the window, peering down at the earth . . . while my wife peers (over the top of her mask) at a book, then drifts into slumber high above the clouds.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
