Rising Above the Haze
I feel like there’s
something special about the view of the sky at higher altitudes… maybe it’s
from being physically nearer to the clouds, or perhaps it’s something in the
air pressure; probably it’s a combination of both. Or perhaps it’s just my own
placebo fooling my senses because I feel so powerfully that I am at finally
where I belong. There are times when the sky looks so strikingly
indistinguishable from the most beautiful painting, just placed there in all
its glory so high above us, particularly at those fleeting times when the
sunlight hits the clouds from just that right angle to unleash those gorgeously
glowing vanilla skies.
Whatever the
case, I find it so incredibly interesting that there is so much grandeur in
this world all around us, particularly in the sky so high above us because we
rarely get the chance to view it from any other angle than we have here at
ground level. We’re so utterly confined to the planet’s surface, not
necessarily any less beautiful in its own right but so much less identifiable
simply because we are so bounded by
the surface, by the relentless tug of gravity rooting us to it. But when we get
those exceedingly rare opportunities to free ourselves from these chains and
actually bring ourselves up above the haze of the surface world we spend so
much of a majority of our time viewing it all from, and look upon the same
familiar world yet from such an unfamiliar vantage point, there is so much more
beauty laid bare we are otherwise entirely ignorant of.
Consider a
simple airplane trip, for example. As the plane begins to roll down the runway
it’s not so different from any typical car ride. You feel the wheels rumbling
over the imperfections of the pavement, and the shuddering of the vehicle as
those vibrations rumble through its body. But something amazing happens as the
plane reaches that critical speed and the upward lift of air acting on the
craft’s body almost seems to cause the oh-so-familiar ground to just casually
drop away just as much as it seems like the plane is actually being lifted up
from it all.
And then
gradually the influence of humanity upon the planet grows less and less apparent,
even as the networks of straight lines and right angles so absent from the
natural structure of things bare themselves so glaringly to you. The awesome
immensity of the planet is further revealed to you as you climb higher and
higher and still there is no end in
sight. What a truly gigantic landscape we are all a part of!
As you approach
the cloud line which was once so high above, so utterly and completely out of
your reach and comprehension, you start to notice what I have found to be one
of the most striking observations I have ever witnessed—that the blanket of
clouds, for the most part, is so much like another surface, as if occupying its
own sphere encircling the planet. This was never apparent to me looking up from
the ground. But gazing down from the window of an airplane I find myself
captivated by this; somehow it’s incredibly beautiful that this should be the
case.
And you realize
how relatively insignificant we each are, individually for sure but even as a
whole. There are no actual boundaries; unless you’re looking at a fabricated
map you could not possibly tell that some arbitrary invisible line separates
one state, or one country, from the next. You see how pockets of civilization
tend to be tightly packed, especially around significant landmarks, almost as
if huddling together against the incredibly vast expanses of unsettled
wilderness still surrounding so much of our prized civilization.
Even the cities
themselves don’t have actual boundaries. There is no protective bubble
enclosing a city and declaring it as such. If not for the signs on the roadside,
or the data from your GPS, you would not truly know that you have entered or
exited some decided “city limit.” No, they are simply collections of structures
and grids placed upon the Earth’s surface, utterly at the mercy of all of
nature’s influences just as everything else is. They have no
privileged rights, no advantage over any other point on the globe except for
the most carefully positioned among them. You’re just surrounded by structures
and a certain density of other people.
At some height
the roads and highways vanish into obscurity, as do entire cities at sufficient
elevation. From high enough above the surface you cannot even see evidence of
the presence of our own race, except maybe for the grid work of landscaping so
blatantly obvious because of all the straight lines and right angles. But then
your aircraft starts to descend upon its destination, ever so gradually, and
you are left to observe the reverse of all of these thought processes as this
privileged vantage point is taken back from you, and your suddenly-heavy feet
are returned to within the haze of Earth’s solid surface so that the glory of
it all can tower over you so tantalizingly once more.
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