And the
experience is utterly different to me, utterly thrilling, better than any
amusement-park ride. As we took off – in itself an unlikely source of glee –
the little town of Herrin came into focus, along with Crab Orchard Lake and
Carbondale in the distance. And then, pure rust, yellow and brown. The last
time I flew in college it was summer – the trees were like broccoli tops –
lush, dense and green. This time, in the fall, the green had almost vanished
and instead all I saw was tight curls of rust and brown, like my
African-American friend’s close-cropped hair. The bucolic countryside of vast
tracts of farmland punctuated by houses and barns and grain silos looked
peaceful, eternal, idyllic, only punctuated by ponds and licks of creeks. As we
neared the Mississippi, fingers of what had once been meanders came into focus,
revealing the secrets of the river’s ancient course.
And the
pilot: he couldn’t have been older than
his twenties, such a young fellow to hold my life – and the lives of my
fellow-travelers – in his hands! And yet he did it with such aplomb, such
insouciance, almost boredom. I wanted to hug him, to congratulate him. I wanted
my daughter to become a pilot for the sheer nobility of the effort. Flying
people through the skies – how romantic! How honorable!
As the
Mississippi merged with the Missouri, I spotted my sister’s town off the
distance, identifiable by the bridge.
St. Louis came into focus. And then, the descent. No getting away from
it, we were dropping. Down we went, as I watched – for the first time – the
runway come into view, and come closer, and closer, and closer… like a
videogame. The landing couldn’t have been smoother, and that creaky little
airborne jalopy braked in a matter of seconds, like a toy airplane, not the
screeching slow-down of a larger craft. We were, improbably, back on the
ground, having just shared our secret adventure, a peephole look into our everyday
world that is usually kept hidden from us.
I was
delighted, smiling, alive! My everyday world, the one I hardly see – and when I
do see it, it’s up close, crawling through it, half-hour to Pinckneyville along
pokey, narrow country highways – was suddenly miniscule, peaceful, toy-like, adorable.
It was tiny – everything is so close! From up there, the water tower of
Pinckneyville was just a few trees away from the bustling metropolis –
comparatively speaking – of Carbondale.
And the
sense of adventure. The sense that lurking up there, all the time, is this
possibility of escape, of adventure. The possibility of seeing the world from a
different perspective, a thrilling new perspective, and it’s there, waiting to
be plucked, waiting to give a chiropractic crack to our brains and to remind us
that the world is smaller and yet larger than we ever imagine as we slog
through our daily lives. That thrill is right here, that new adventures and new
perspectives and new possibilities are within our grasp. I had gone nowhere, to
St. Louis, a trip I take several times a month, and yet flying there lifted off
the fog of routine and opened up the frisson of newness. As I rose above my
day-to-day life, my sense of possibility was triggered. As I climbed into
infinite space, my sense of infinite possibility expanded.
I know that
to a physicist airplane flight makes sense, but I’m almost glad to be
illiterate in physics. To me, it seems magical. I was flying! I can fly!
