Airborne Observations, 26-10-04

Original email October 26, 2004

There is absolutely nothing in the world like an early morning flight in a small plane. and it's a good thing too, because there's probably nothing else that would have dragged us out of bed at 3AM on our sunday morning last week. and we are so glad we went!

Dawn patrol-- once in a while the fly-boys at the Redcliff aeroclub (where danny flies) plan a big early morning flying game, and they fill the Brisbane skies with a handful of their little planes, just after sunrise. Usually, it's a kind of scavanger hunt, where the pilots and passangers of each airplane make up a team and find clues and answers along their flight. But the weather played games with us too much this time, so we didn't get to play ours -- our routes got messed up.

at the last minute, the boys decided we'd still go flying, we'd just take some different routes-- away from the storms. so we flew up the sunshine coast -- just north of Brisbane. unfortunately, the camera i brought (hoping to capture some of it for you) broke just before we took off. So i'll do my best to paint some of it in words.

Any time you fly in a little plane like the Cessna 172, you can't help but devour the views. The ground spreads out before you like a giant 3-D map. But over the ocean, early in the morning, it's a whole different kind of amazing. You stare at the horizon with a sneaking suspicion that you can almost see the globe's curve, and you can't help but imagine what you might find if you followed it... The wide flatness of the sea is speckled by spotlights from the sun -- not just one or 2 rays peeking out from the clouds -- you can actually see entire families of clouds and every place the sun stretches out to settle in over the sea for the day. As if she's blessing everything with morning.

You watch as the scenery changes slowly and constantly. Every ordinary thing is part of a fascinating drama when you watch it from the air. You follow the elegant caligraphy of the river. you smile at the mosaic of scattered and ordered boxes where people live and play. All around them, soft purple bouquets spring up -- Jacaranda trees in full bloom. You laugh at the the tiny surf boards along the neverending beach, lines of miniature 4-wheel drive tracks, and the toy people walking their...ants? dogs that look exactly like insects.

Yesterday's rains greened everything in one big breath. The birds are the best; you fly over them and sometimes see thier expert shadows -- tiny and carefree. Diving, swooping, gliding...i wonder, do they laugh at the machines they've inspired, with wings that can't move?

You feel in one moment that you can see and understand so much -- you have this massive perspective. you see the order and the beauty; you can understand how communities and ecosystems live side by side. In that same moment you're aware of countless confusions-- there's more you can see that doesn't seem to make sense. So many more Whats and Whys than you had before you took off. All at once, you have a glimpse of wisdom, of freedom, and of humility. That's what flying is for me, anyway. i'm so lucky i married a pilot!

It even means I get to learn a new language -- and you know how much i love that! i like listening to the radio transmitions between the planes. They sound all smart and important... and then suddenly they say something really silly like "Bravo Echo Zulu" and i laugh. Each plane has its own 3-letter name for ID. Since pilots with different accents from all over the world share the same sky, they can't risk misunderstanding eachother on the radio. So when identifying any aircraft by name, they use this specific code -- one distinct word represents each letter. (and many of you probably knew all that already; just shows how much i knew about flying. everything's new and exciting!) the plane danny flies a lot is WLY -- Whiskey Lima Yankee. Danny got a kick out of teaching me the code -- for an hour after the flight on Sunday, he had me reading all the license plates we saw in code. Ours, incedentily, is Delta Kilo Uniform. :)

and now i'm off to prep for dinner. hope you're enjoying your October -- whatever season it may be where you are. love and good things, alicia