The view from airplanes is a gift we too often take for granted. C.J. Cherryh wrote, in Visible Light (1986), that when the plane takes off, she thinks of the countless generations of people from before the invention of airplanes who would have so loved to fly. I have remembered that vision for decades. We grow jaded, and we shouldn't.
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| the world below |
I have flown many places in my life. Originally I loved a window seat, staring down at the land below. I took pictures--with a brownie box camera or with a better single lens reflex camera--but the poor quality of the pictures discouraged me and I gradually gave up. Mostly, in the last 30 years, I've sat in middle seat, my husband on the aisle, or, when traveling for business, in the aisle seat myself. Lots of photo opportunities lost. Lately, though, I have been delighted by the landforms going by once again. And doing better with 21st century photography.
I saw some of my "from the air" photos this week and on a whim, took a look at what I have.
Mount St. Helens in 1993. You can just hear the pilot, dipping around to show us the volcano, "there on your left..."
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| Mt. St. Helens, 1993 |
Flying between the islands in Hawaii, you can't miss seeing one or more of the big volcanoes, Haleakala Mauna Kea, and Mauna Loa. I believe this is looking out at the Big Island, seeing Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, in 2012.
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| Hawaiian volcanoes |
Flying west from Denver, you get Rocky Mountain panoramas
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Rocky Mountains near Denver
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The first time I flew in an airplane was as a high school student in 1962. We had moved that year and in the summer I flew from Ohio to New York to visit the friends I had left behind. I remember being enchanted. In particular, I looked out to see rivers winding through the landscape. My science class had recently taught me that rivers aged, starting fairly straight and gradually winding more and more until they formed great "S"'s and even reconnected to form ox-bow lakes. I saw some of that from the plane and was excited to actually see the shapes of rivers. I thought how great it would be if classes could take airplane trips; seeing the rivers would make learning so much easier!
I can find no photos of winding rivers. There are a couple of rivers in the photo below, following the lay of the land. Today we get these panoramas easily, from drones as well as planes. But videos and other people's photos are not the same as you yourself, flying above the mountains.
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| rivers from the air |
Air travel lets you look at agricultural land, taking it in differently from when you see it from the ground. Travel further and you see that different regions' agricultural fields and pastures have distinctive shapes
Colorado fields in fall: big squares in this take-off picture. Note the circles, green because they are watered, in the distance: those have center pivot irrigation.
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| fields of Colorado, fall |
Fields near Stockton, California, in the broad flat Sacramento River delta
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| Stockton, California, mid summer |
Fields in western Costa Rica. The plane is a bit higher up explaining part of the size difference, but the hills and forests along streams, create a very different pattern. Inside and along the fields, the green dots are a living fence; live trees instead of poles or metal posts as the fence posts.
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| fields of Costa Rica, January |
Denmark, seen through light clouds. Irregularly-shaped fields. The big yellow fields are plantings of one of the mustards, probably an oil seed such as rape, Brassica napus, in full bloom.
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| Fields in Denmark, May |
I like coasts and often take their photos.
This is circling to land at Vancouver, Canada
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| Vancouver |
In contrast, the coast of Iceland, plane is lower and you can see a few individual white houses.
And then there are spectacular panoramas. Here is San Francisco Bay (San Francisco is on the left, the Golden Gate Bridge just this side of the fog bank.)
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| San Francisco Bay |
And, because views from the air are so cool, we took a commercial helicopter ride over Kauai, Hawaii--wow!
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| Kauai, golf course from the air |
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| Kauai coast from helicopter |
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| Kauai coast from helicopter |
Air travel has made our world smaller, but it is more than just a way to get from here to there. It shows us the geography. The more you know, the more you can see in the landscapes below the plane.
Of course, often it is just clouds, but clouds can be spectacular.
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| clouds from above |
Air travel is a luxury and a necessity. It burns a lot of fuel and the byproducts pollute and add to the opacity of of our atmosphere, enhancing global warming. I do not want to give up on seeing the world from an airplane, so I am trying not to fly frivolously and to support technologies that reduce the negative impact of air travel. I can remember when the general opinion was that electric cars were hopelessly impractical. I am hoping for similar progress on airline fuels.
Sometimes your timing is good and you get to see sunset or sunrise from high in the sky:
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| sunset, Melbourne, Australia |
Comments and corrections welcome.
If you know the actual quote from Visible Light, I'd appreciate it. I left the book in a Costa Rican hotel, decades ago.
I wrote a novel imagining traveling to South America from Europe in 1630, when most of the American plants were unknown to Europeans
I Have Seen Marvels. Available on Amazon
link or from me.
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