“To ride on the wings of air…” [A King for the Castle – by Colleen Ferguson]
Is there a Superhero on the loose or just an adventurous soul? Adventures are awesome – especially when things go well, and you don’t run into dangerous situations. Or if the bumps in the road are easily dealt with. We’ve been fortunate on our travels, so we’ve taken in some wonderful sites and gatherings and created some great memories. But today’s blog is not about the adventure, but rather it is about the process of getting to the adventures and the wonder of man’s astounding ability to fly.
Are you afraid of flying? Or just hate the process of the hurry up, get through the lines, etc.…and then waiting for the airplane to show up and the boarding to commence? The first time I flew in an airplane was on a humongous 747 (that’s 467 passengers plus crew members) after a twelve-hour delay and with outside boarding on the tail end of a bitterly cold snowstorm. That metal staircase was pretty cold, but I had tropical places I was going to, so it was worth the wait and the outside freezing temps.
Ok, so that was supposed to be my first flight… In truth, there were blizzard conditions (see my blog "The Answer to all Your Questions" for a description of blizzard conditions) north, east and west of Chicago that day until about four in the morning when we boarded. We had to catch a flight from Traverse City, Michigan that could get us to O’Hare Airport from the south. Traveling by car was impossible. After experiencing the big plane, I barely count that first trip in a small, bumpy twelve-seater. But the size of the airplane just doesn’t matter. The first time you sit in a plane and watch as it’s being driven like a huge bird-car – with you in it – down a runway, and then its hovering for its turn to speed toward a takeoff, and then when it barrels down the runway and you finally feel the moment the plane gracefully, suddenly lifts off the ground – wow. The feeling of flight, of riding on cushy air instead of solid, bumpy ground is a magnificent moment. A moment of wonder – how can they lift off with tons of steel and supplies and people and fly?!
Three decades and over twenty plane rides later, I am still a little awed by it. The driving a plane around on the ground, the liftoff, the very steep ascent, the tipping of the plane to turn it in the right direction which makes you feel like you are going to fall out even though it’s impossible – you can’t even open the window – and then the final leveling out to four or five hundred miles an hour on the trek to your destination. And at the end is the descent and the feeling of the brakes pulling back on the tremendous speed and weight. All quite fascinating and amazing.
And the best part? (At least for more cloudy regions.) On that first cold, dark, and cloudy winter flight in January over thirty years ago, after the excitement of the liftoff and the climb above the dark, dreary, dismal, depressing clouds, you discover that the sun is always shinning above us even when we can’t see it. Yes, the plane rose through the complete cloud cover into the blue skies and bright sunshine that had awaited us. You are suddenly, miraculously in a lovely, white cloud land – if only we could dance on those clouds! That moment has stuck with me over the years, reminding me that if we look deeper or higher or inward or outward, we can find the sun is still shining, there is still joy in us and around us; blessings abound in good times and bad. It is there, if we look for it, if we rise above the dark, the clouds – of sadness, depression, pain…it’s there, it’s find-able, obtainable.
Do we ever consider the things that we can’t see? It never registered in my mind that the sun is always shining above the clouds, even though I technically knew it was, but that day a lot of things made more sense. Like no matter how dismal or disheartening my day or life is at any given moment, joy is around one of the next bends – because the sun is still shining above us, in us and in the people around us. There are people who love us, opportunities ready for us, changes, moves, attitude adjustments – seeing life as a “the sun is still shining, and the clouds will eventually break, especially if I rise above them” kind of approach to life. Remembering there are details or perspectives that we cannot see but are still there waiting for us to see them, accept them, embrace them.
I love that we have so much knowledge at our fingertips these days, and I had planned on Googling some info on how planes can rise and remain in the sky, etc., but I decided not to for this blog. I want to keep the magic alive for myself and anyone else who is fascinated or thrilled with flying. Sometimes knowing the logic of things is good and often necessary, but there are things we can leave in the experts’ hands – especially when we have no control over the process – and simply sit back and enjoy the experience.
So, if we’re going to name a Superhero on the loose in today’s blog, it would be the people who created flight for mankind. It isn’t just flight they created, but greater connections, greater abilities to travel and experience new places and things, and live and work in new places, and in saving massive amounts of time for people when they travel. They made the world a whole lot smaller, safer, and amazing.
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