A moment in the air
Currently sitting in the eastern-facing window seat of an airplane flying from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. I’ve flown quite a bit for school in the past, and I’ve taken this route at least a few times. But I’ve never been struck so much by the view of the sunrise from the air.
My plane took off at 6:30ish, at just the perfect time to get airborne before the sun came up. I opened my window on the ground, but was reading my book until just now when I glanced out and saw what appeared to be a line of molten magma on the ground. The clouds formed the outline of gently rolling hills behind it, perfectly matching the Pennsylvania landscape. So I didn’t realize at first that I was looking at the sky and an active sunrise. The magma was terrifyingly crimson, and I half expected it to spill onto the countryside in a volcanic eruption.
And now the sun is slightly higher in the sky, and the clouds form a semicircular halo around it, and it looks like an exploding supernova.
Glancing down, the clouds below me look like windswept snow, but also a bit like a macro photograph of a white fuzzy blanket.
It’s surprisingly difficult to tell the difference between the sky and the land. They just fade together into the fog and clouds.
And oh! I just noticed an additional layer of clouds above us. But instead of looking like snow, these look like someone took a digital paintbrush on photoshop and drew straight parallel lines across the sky, moving the paintbrush quick enough that the layer of paint isn’t smooth—it has texture.
And now we begin our ascent into the highest layer of clouds, and everything below fades from view.