During a recent flight, I came to the realization that I’ve become very jaded when it comes to witnessing the beauty around me while flying. I can understand how it happened after a dozen years and countless flights, I suppose. The whole experience can be miserable: long lines , throngs of irritable travelers, delayed or canceled flights - all of those things that make most of us dread going to the airport. To deal with these things, I find that I put myself in a kind of trance, basically trying to block those things around me as a coping mechanism. It’s an especially useful thing for very long flights, but also works well when wedged in between two fat sweaty guys on an oversold flight.

The problem is that I don’t pay attention to most of the things around me while in this state. Recently I was on a flight and spent a bit of time looking out the window - something I do from time to time, but without really noticing what I’m looking at. But this time, for some reason, I remembered just how amazing things could look from the clouds. It’s a very different thing to be looking horizontally at a group of clouds, or from above, and the view can be spectacular.

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My favorite time to fly, however, is on a nice clear night.  A couple of days ago I was flying out of NYC at night, and the view is just incredible.  To see a place by its outline of street and building lights is almost surreal, particularly planned cities like New York.

Thunderstorms can also provide some great, if bumpy, scenery.  I remember once doing a transatlantic trip where we went over some storm clouds at night, and you could watch the lightning jump from cloud to cloud and then segment off into smaller arcs.  Quite beautiful, at least until you realize you’re in a metal tube in the sky, which kind of tempers the experience.

So I guess the moral of the story is to pay attention to the beauty around you…at least until the infant next to you breaks you out of your reverie with an ear-splitting screech.