Eight hours ago I was on the ground in Boston. Now I’m in a hotel room overlooking an intersection in San Bernardino. It took five hours flat to get from Boston to L.A., and the balance to pick up a rental car and laze my way back eastward to the hotel, to set myself up in the room, post a reply to a comment over at Linux Journal, take a call, and start writing this.
The whole way west I looked out the window. It was smooth and mostly clear from coast to coast. Since I flew United, I could listen to “From the Flight Deck”: cockpit chatter on Channel 9, and groove on how routinized aviation has turned the miraculous into the mundane. I’ve flown this route many times, almost always shooting pictures. Every flight I learn more, and use more of what I’ve learned about the land below.
I know when Lake Huron, Comb Ridge, Cane Valley, the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley are coming up. I know how geologically new they all are, in spite of the ages of the rock that comprises them. The photo above is where the Little Colorado River meets the Colorado, roughly where the Grand Canyon begins. It’s one of the 467 photos I show a few hours ago, and you can peruse here. (I’ll need time to caption all of them, but quite a few are identified.)
It boggles me that they always tell passengers to lower their window shades so others can watch some movie, while outside the window is a movie our ancestors would have paid limbs to see.
Anyway, I just don’t want to take life’s graces for granted. And flying, for me at least, is a big one.
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