Ever wondered what a spectacular pink sunset looks like from above? I'll admit I hadn't. It's a sight to behold: those clouds are lit up from below!
The flight back to NYC from San Diego takes you across the desert and along the rim of the Grand Canyon before crossing snowy mountains and entering the Great Plains. (The rest is usually just human - exoskeletons of light.) There's a part of myself I rediscover on each such flyover, a part at once lonely and at home as it contemplates geological cornucopiae mutely marking the churning earth below, the elegant results of millions of years of gently unrelenting erosion on ancient sebeds and newer mountains, the evanescent play of clouds and their shadows - and the hieroglyphics and geometries of human settlement. I've been seeing these wonders for longer than I can remember. How could they not have become part of the way I see the world?
(Apologies for some of the colors on these; a dirty window and hard-to-register reds forced me to use photoshop. As true as I can manage.)
