The following was written on January 6th while flying out to Boise, ID.

I suddenly realized I was unable to open my pretzels.

I had to turn on the overhead reading light to find the little notch in the seam of the otherwise un-tearable mylar bag. It was one of those moments I was glad to be alone.

I don’t know how anybody can not stare out the window while flying on a clear night. Heading West out of MSP the terrain is basically flat as a pool table. During the day one is treated to a vast quilt of varying patches. In spring the patches are largely grey and brown. In summer they vary from emerald green, to dark forest, to flaming yellow to golden bronze. In winter, for the most part, the patches are almost invisible due to a blanket of snow.

But at night, on a clear night, the ground becomes invisible. The earth vanishes. The scene outside the window becomes a black river festooned with glowing lily pads of orange light slowing flowing, in this case, from right to left.

We just climbed, rather suddenly too. We departed MSP on the northern runway, 12L, performed a gentle climbing left turn which afforded me, on the left side of the plane, a spectacular tour of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. The captain then came on to say we’d be climbing to 39,000 feet for cruise. We’re now a bit past 45 minutes into the flight and we’re still climbing. My ears confirm this. And we just did a series of rather abrupt throttle-up climbs that took us through some respectable turbulance.

Still climbing.

Outside, as we head continue over South Dakota, the lilypads of light become fewer and farther between. Many of the lilypads larger than a speck have a special feature: a flashing light, alternating white and green. Looking out with my face pressed against the lexan window to get the maximum field of view I can sometimes see five, six, even eight or even nine flashing lights. Like fireflies in the night; you see them out of the corner of your eye and have to look to where you thought you saw the flash and wait. In that second or two the plane you’re riding on has moved, so the next flash is not quite where you expected it to be.

Those green and white lights are the beacons of airports. In a small plane one of the things a pilot is always doing is looking for a place to land in case of trouble. I remember my flight instructor, years ago, asking at odd intervals during our longer flights “where would you go now?” As one airport moved out of range I looked about for an obliging golf course, or possibly a super highway although she cautioned me that cars on highways rarely get out of the way, so highways are frequently problematic emergency landing strips.

The glowing lilypads are pretty sparse now. Annette took this same flight last night. I watched it via a flightracker. The course was over South Dakota, then along the Montana/Wyoming border, directly over Yellowstone, then across the Bitterroot Range and Southwest into Boise. Now, about an hour into the flight, no longer climbing, I can only assume we’re passing over the badlands heading for the Black Hills. I imagine that large lilypad off to the left to be Rapid City.

Now, almost an hour later, boredom begins to set in. The lilypads are all but gone, so are the beacons. We’re over range land now. Not much down there to see. The turbulence has passed as well and aircraft feels essentially motionless, only the drone of the engines and the subdued roar of the 450+ MPH rush of air only six inches from where I’m sitting suggest motion. Simply amazing.