The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
Misty Morning West Virginia
As the cool indigo of night is swept away by the dawn, low clouds and fog adhere to the hollows, rivers, and streams of the West Virginia landscape as if misty tendrils of a vine clinging to an earthen wall. A summer morning in Appalachia.
Land Shark
Along the coastline protruding into the Sea of Cortez, colors and textures blend into greater abstract shapes and a land shark materializes before our eyes. Happy Summer.
Summer’s Swirl
In the swirl of summer weather, animated storms abound along the Eastern Seaboard and travelers find themselves delayed, in holding, or diverting to safe havens where they wait out the weather and refuel…the story of my life lately…it’s good to finally be home.
Rolling In
Welcome Summer…a system of storms rolls in on Chicago and eclipses the morning light…from under its shadow we race eastward to beat the storm.
In the Heart of the Tempest
In the heart of the tempest, there is light…and with the rain, it falls back to earth relieving our darkest emotions and filling us with hope.
A River Runs Through It
Like so many other great cities of the world, a river runs through Washington, DC. Enjoying this angle from a “comfortable” seat in the back of a regional jet en route to National Airport, we get an angle on the monuments and National Mall that leads us into the gentle meandering path of the Potomac River. Open the shade and keep your camera ready and you’ll find flying as exciting as when you were a kid.
Pushing Away the Day
Storms enter Central Virginia, sending the dense blowoff of their anvil tops southeast of Richmond…There the sunlit evening sky is seemingly consumed by darkness and the day is pushed away in a narrowing ribbon of misty light.
A Contrast of Courses
In a contrast of courses, we meet with serendipity as a hole in the clouds reveals the intersection of our direct course across the American Southwest and the meandering course of the Colorado River as it winds through southern Utah. By chance, the point of intercept occurs at the Rincon, a mesa born of an ancient shift in the river’s course.
Rising Turbulence
Weather brews in the morning light below the aerial horizon, creating chaos in the atmosphere that hints at the turbulent weather that will dominate our day…Summer is coming.
Yosemite – Emerging from the Shadows
As we drive into the morning sun, Yosemite emerges from the shadows…proof positive that the soul of a pilot is rewarded for early morning preflights.
Rounding Yosemite
From the western banks of Mona Lake, we look toward Yosemite and are hopeful that we might catch a glimpse of its true majesty in a vista worthy of an Ansel Adams photograph…but the view here is different…the skin tingling feeling is there, but we miss the sense of a solitary monument standing before us…from our perch in the troposphere, we are blessed to take in a grand view of enormous swaths of earth; we don’t see it as through a telescope or a straw…we imagine the whole and with this realization, our joy and amazement at the diverse textures and features of the earth grows tenfold and as we pass over Yosemite we recognize that we are not looking for a single star in the sky, but rather, we are looking at heaven.
San Juan Revealed
The San Juan River is revealed to us from beneath a layer of early morning clouds…Her twisting course appears as though a single clue in a complex mystery, illuminated but unexplained as she winds through the desert lands of southeast Utah.
Hermione at Mount Vernon
A good day for sightseeing while traveling home in the passenger cabin…On approach to Washington, we pass another ship making its approach to Alexandria…the replica of General Lafayette’s ship Hermione pauses its advance as she passes Mount Vernon; perhaps in homage to General Washington. Visit http://www.hermione2015.com to learn more about the Hermione’s voyage.
Power in the Hills
There is a power in the rolling hills of California…yes, there is real power in the wind turbines slowly turning along the ridges, but there is a greater and more spiritual power at work…It is subtle…No towering spires of stone or dramatic rocky edifices are present in these rolling hills, but their very graceful rolls convey a message of harmony and unfettered flow…One may easily imagine a warm breeze flowing over the hillsides gently massaging the earth…A peaceful comforting feeling exudes from the powerful yet unassuming power of the landscape.
Strange Harmony
As the Carolina coast blurs into the aerial horizon, a strange harmony emerges in the contrast of light and shadow. The result is the union of earth and atmosphere in a mystical scene as light transits through the atmosphere, reflects off the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, and hangs in the rising vapors of the evening sky.
Curvature
With altitude and a shift in perspective, what appeared straight, or level, or two dimensional suddenly reveals its curved, rolling, and three dimensional nature. The Tennessee River gracefully curves around the Hiwassee Wildlife Refuge and rolls toward Chattanooga.
Stepping Stones
Across a desert sea where ridges form waves of earth and mesas become islands…We tip toe across this sea following a progression of stepping stones from Moss Back Butte over the Tables of the Sun to Wingate Mesa.
Echoes and Monuments
Echoing patterns etched into riverbeds and desert floors, unwitting monuments to a dynamic planet’s history…The Great Bend in the San Juan River and Rincon to its north are individually interesting and significant landmarks to travelers on earth, but from our vantage point they appear to mirror one another’s movements through time. Whether water moving with Coriolis forces through similarly composed geologies, or some divine flourish of pattern to appeal to heavenly observers, the extraordinary graceful curves provide a poetic rhyme scheme for the delight of our eyes.
Sounding with Light
Flying by the Grand Canyon West Airport, we gain a different perspective on the Grand Canyon…This perspective coupled with the low angle of the setting sun reveals deeply textured contours, ordinarily flattened by the broad daylight, but accentuated by the growing shadows. Faces are revealed that had been hidden in plain sight. Ribbons of color are unmasked by the shifting shadows, each providing a visual sounding of the crevices’ depths as they are revealed by the sinking light.
Exploring a Dream
As the clouds roll back into Yellowstone and our aspirations of exploring the terrain with our eyes begin to evaporate, I think of youthful dreams of exploration…The thought that we could go anywhere, see anything, and do anything…that there were no limits to our pursuits…The lines between our dreams, desires, aspirations, and goals were unimagined as everything was, simply, the future…Grounded in maturity, but not caught up in the pursuit of being “grown-up,” each day of our journey can provide a glimpse of that intangible sense of excitement and anticipation, if we always see the world with the newness of our youthful eyes, focusing on exploration without worrying about the destination.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 