The Puddle Jumper

This morning I boarded a nine-seat plane to fast-track my way to St. Louis, where I was to catch a plane for a conference. I hadn’t been on a tiny plane like that since my college years when my sister dated a pilot. Since then, I had only flown internationally, or long-haul domestic flights on large planes, planes where you are so insulated from the act of flying that – except for popping ears – you hardly know you’re airborne. But on a nine-seater, there’s no mistaking it: you are most definitely in a wobbly little contraption flying improbably high over the land.  

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!