Category: Various and Sundry

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Current tunes: Holocene -Bon Iver

I’m on my flight, somewhere over the Atlantic, caught between clocks that read 22:50 and 4:50, unable to sleep and so happy that I am.

I like to use some word loosely, like most of my peers, and the word that probably gets the most abuse from me is “awesome.” Most of the time I don’t care, but every once in a great while I’ll get the chance to have my inner Inigo Montoya go “you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” This is one of those times.

At 37,291ft (11369m) in the air, having taken my usual 2 hour nap, with my usual travel go to music flowing into my ear, thank you Bon Iver, and with nothing else to entertain I had the chance to look out my window at the sky. No longer above, parallel. Well, not technically but you get the idea. And what a sight it is to behold.

The sky has never been an inky black to me, and even now that holds true. With the plane’s rapid advance East the colors are getting infinitesimally lighter, and that is beautiful in and of itself, however the real show stealers are the stars.

At home the polluted sky gives splashes of warm color whenever the sun sets, but the stars are mostly impossible to see from light pollution unless you get very lucky. In Olympia, the sky is visible, and it always gives me a bit of joy. This summer’s meteor shower that my friends and I watched on the library roof is evidence of that. That was pleasant, maybe I said that it was “awesome,” but again, I missed used a word, took away it’s true potential. No, no- I’m talking about true, unadulted awe.

That is what these stars are giving me now. Hundred upon hundreds of speck of light, blinking through a veil of almost black-midnight blue. The likes of which I haven’t seen in YEARS, not since standing at the base of the Grand Tetons, soft grass underfoot, family around me, and a child’s easy wonderment; the Milky Way bright and winding above, stretching far as my eyes could see, past the tips of the mountains in the foreground, into the great unknown.

That humans have come this far, to fly in the sky, between the Earth and the Heavens like it is nothing-to be this much much closer to the unknown world above! It’s mind boggling to think about sometimes.

I’ll readily admit that there is probably an excitement factor coming into play here and a little of that childlike wonderment that I don’t think I’ll ever let go of. That’s okay. And even if you, dearest reader, don’t agree that this is awesome, that’s fine too. For now, I’m going to leave you, and lean back into seat 46K and enjoy the view and stew in my excitement for my upcoming adventure.

Til then,

Turnip

(Sleep deprived posts are sleep deprived posts.)