The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
White Christmas at Big Bear
As we make our way over the river and through the woods to take our passengers to reunions with far off family and friends, many rest comfortably in their seats with their shades drawn dreaming of a white Christmas…But the aviators, the ones who love to fly and who love to look outside while enjoying the ride (not just merely get there), are treated with the sight of a white Christmas as we pass Big Bear Mountain in Southern California. From the desert floor to the mountain top, snow abounds…Thank you to those who lifted their shades, enjoyed the view, and shared it with a new friend…You make holiday travel a joyful experience. Safe travels, happy holidays, and peace to you all.
Singular Sense of Light
In a transcendent moment, as the first light of day kisses the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, we pass through a singularity…Light, water, earth, and sky will never again meet at exactly this time, in exactly this way, in this singular sense of light. Happy Solstice.
Abstract Landscape: Meander in Canyonlands
A meander, a transition through a plane…wandering seemingly without purpose, but always driving forward toward an unspecified destination…the journey is more important than the destination…meeting travelers along the way and coloring our journey with the beauty of other lands communicated through a smile or kindly conversation…enjoying the ride so much that we revel in the turns and switchbacks that make life more interesting. Happy travels.
Red Cast
Radiating its red cast into the atmosphere, what seemed translucent takes on the color of earth and draws us into the landscape. Sedona, with its myriad canyons of red earth and sand stone running right into town, is as complex as it is simply beautiful. This is a place that tells a story and begs to be explored.
Layer Upon Layer
Approaching Sedona from the east, we first sense a vague red glow on the horizon. As we grow nearer, a jagged recession in the rising terrain emerges the glow and the vagaries of color are replaced with distinct vertical formations of red and sand colored stone that progress, layer upon layer, into the distant landscape.
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Discoveries in the Shadows
It is often in the light of day when we are our most complacent selves, but when we sense a gathering storm and we prepare for the challenges ahead, we tune our eyes and our minds to understand the signs…We perform as best we can and ride out the storm…And when the light returns , we look deeply into the shadows to discover and understand ourselves and our limitations…We learn and improve and, for every storm we face, those discoveries made in the shadows make us stronger and more able to face whatever may come our way.
Abstract Landscape: Obscured Perspective
Though we cannot see the flow, there is flow…Though we cannot see the reason, there is reason…Though we cannot see the purpose, there is purpose…Though we cannot see the light, there is light… Lost in the confusion of details and patterns, often we are overwhelmed and fail to see a big picture…but there is always a bigger picture…there is always a bigger scheme…there is always another perspective and a path toward understanding…and finding that perspective is a gift for all time.
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Adding Light…
As the setting sun illuminates a nimbus cloud over Louisiana in a moment of wonder, a thought…The behavior of the earth’s atmosphere can be explained by science. Science is real, factual, and indisputable, but it is merely the lens for our understanding…capturing the natural world and making sense of it. When we deny science, we cease to make sense, we cease to think, and we make the practice of “good stewardship” an intangible concept. Without observation and fact-based science, we lose the ability to interact with our world in a meaningful way. With science, we are empowered to move through space, to be good stewards, and to dream…We are enlightened…and that light (from within and without us) touches science to create wonder and encourage us to ask the question, “Why?”
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Waves on the Twilight
A temporal moment on the sea above, as a line of golden waves crest on a purple twilight sea of clouds, only to fade and dissipate into night.
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Overtaken by Twilight
Chasing the retreating sun, we cruise along in the purple evening shadow of earth as twilight overtakes us. The sun’s light shrinks to a narrow ribbon along the aerial horizon and illuminates the crests of billowy waves upon the cloud deck below.
Seeping In
Have you ever loved a place so much that it seemed to seep into your soul? Memories, images, colors, and moods all flood in to occupy the space of our dreams and become intertwined with our senses…That place becomes a part of us…deep inside and inseparable. At this electric moment over Virginia, I know that feeling…it has become a part of my soul.
Misty Morning Mono Lake
It’s that transitional time of year when the cold nights and latent moisture lead to morning mist and fog. No where does this create a more surreal scene than in the Great Basin. Cruising through the morning air, we are trapped with the mist beneath a layer of high stratus clouds. The radiance of the morning light illuminates the moisture, giving us a detailed view, but it is so bright that we seem to transit a monochromatic world made all the more stark by the dramatic landscape of Mono Lake and Yosemite beyond. While it looks calm, the lenticular clouds over the distant lake give a clue to the instability of the air as we skip across the current.
Clouds Along the Kaibob
Winter in the Dunes
Winter is weeks away, but in a nearly ironic twist, a fresh blanket of snow covers the sand dunes of the Great Sand Dunes National Park in southern Colorado. Thin lines of warm sand define the crests of snowy waves. A rhythmic landscape flowing between mountains and plains, summer and winter…
Opting Outside
When we opt outside, we send ripples through the air and across the land and our collective footsteps are felt throughout the earth like ripples in stone.
Over the River…
As we come to another Thanksgiving in America, I wish safe travels to all those traveling over the river and through the woods…and especially to my friends that I will see in the skies today, thanks for doing what you do to make the skies safe and the ride smooth. I’ll see you in Dallas, or Reno, or somewhere along the way.
Light Takes Form
In a moment over Nebraska, at the nexus between night and day, not satisfied with simply coloring the sky, light takes on a spectral form and beckons us into the night.
Autumn Snow
The rocky parapets along the face of Bryce Canyon catch the late afternoon light, creating a warm contrast to the fresh dusting of snow. With several weeks to go, Winter wants us to know that she is on her way.
Abstract Landscape – Vanishing Appalachia
The Blue Ridge Mountains roll gracefully in their old age and convey a sense of visual serenity as the depths of their blues vary and intensify along their defined ridges, seeming to vanish into the aerial horizon.
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Lost Around the Bend
Crossing the high desert of Arizona, we pass hundreds of miles of relatively level terrain with vertical features rising into the desert air as if appended to that flat surface…but all that changes as we come upon the Little Colorado Gorge and the Grand Canyon shortly thereafter. We trace the lines of earth in the recessing rock faces and follow the course of the Colorado River as it meanders through the canyon…As it turns northward, we follow its course around the bend and become lost in the endless maze of earth…the best kind of lost, where our senses are overloaded with the stimuli of color and texture in rapidly shifting dimensions…Enjoy.
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The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 