The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
Alignment
Turning to the southeast over Washington, DC at sunrise, the monuments appear in perfect alignment as the first light of day bathes the tallest structures in a warm yellow glow…in contrast, the dark shadows lingering in the recesses of city streets etch the landscape with L’Enfant’s grand plan and bring it to life in three dimensions. I fell in love with this city as a child, not for the politics, but for the urban plan and the steady stream of surprises presented openly in statues and monuments and hidden subtly in its grand facades.
Networking With Purpose
We talk about networking all the time, but a network is meaningless if it lacks substance…Flying over the Colorado River near Blythe, California, I marvel at the golden reflections of the vast network of canals and waterlines that spread from the river into the surrounding desert lands…The network brings life to the arid land and creates a fertile oasis…As I think about the value of that network, it exists for a purpose, there is a flow and an exchange, it is not hollow, it is alive, and those touched by it thrive…Were it a network without meaning, the desert would persist. Now imagine if we were all to fill our networks with a sense of purpose and pump them to life, imagine the fertile community we could create.
Deep in Twilight
As darkness descends on the earth amid the soft light of the evening, twilight appears as and ambiguous angular penumbral space…In stark contrast, as the bright white light of morning cuts through the shadows overhead a late autumn snowstorm, the twilight is distinct and unambiguous…a dark space between night and day that narrows until it disappears as the day advances.
Meandering Border
The border between North Carolina and Tennessee meanders along ridges of the Great Smokey Mountains while shrouded near-perpetually in a thin misty veil.
Curling Through the Low Country
The Arkansas River makes its way through the hills of Arkansas toward the Mississippi River and, as it passes through the low country, it curls through the landscape leaving lush green circles in the echoes of its course. Joining together with the Mississippi, it flows to the Gulf of Mexico lying over the aerial horizon.
Into the Depths
The sun creeps over the eastern faces of the Rockies and makes its way into each ravine and crevice as it processes westward. Beneath us, its light reaches into the depths of Hells Canyon and reveals the Snake River as it emerges to wind its way through Oregon and into the Columbia beyond.
The Storm Passes
Climbing through a snow storm as it consumes the east coast of the United States, we are rocked by moderate turbulence and pelted with waves of ice and snow until we break out on top…In the clear it seems smooth, but with every tiny wisp of cloud that flashes past our wings, we feel another jolt…until at last we reach Bowling Green, Kentucky and the back side of the weather. Suddenly the cloud deck falls off from 35,000 feet to almost nothing. At the moment that the weather passes behind us, the air is perfectly smooth and we continue our trek with a clear view of the earth beneath us.
Above the Night
Caught in the space between night and day, we cruise along in a twilight layer and contemplate the world around us…unlike on earth, where we believe that our reality is the same for everyone around us…Below us, it is night and above us, we watch another jet pass by in daylight…We are caught in that space, but infinitely aware of the different conditions of those around us…We all see the world differently, but perhaps those differing perceptions are just a matter of how much light with which we are surrounded.
Snow on the Mesa
Between Fort Defiance and Crownpoint, New Mexico, snow covered cliffs grasp the edge of a grand mesa and assume an identity all their own. The cliffs’ erosion is halted as the snow layers up and adds texture to the once shadowy veins. In the snow, these veins take on the dimension of layers of feathered plumage as they dress the mesa’s visage.
Fissure Apparent
A canal through the desert reflects early morning light, taking on the appearance of quicksilver as it cuts through the desert and supplies water from the Colorado River to unknown communities hidden in the landscape beyond…An apparent fissure is illuminated in an otherwise homogenous landscape, its appearance momentarily divides this world in two…but when this moment passes, we are left with the world we knew and the knowledge that, through our efforts and perspective, we have brought new life to the landscape…we see it in a different way…this apparent fissure gave us pause to reflect…this is not a line that divides us, it is a line that heralds renewal and brings life to an arid landscape.
Coulees in Snow
Flying over central Washington, the morning’s cloud cover recedes to reveal snow covered ridges giving way to the depths of numerous coulees. In a seemingly random network of finely articulated vein-like ravines, the path of least resistance is defined and the Columbia River makes its way through the landscape, pausing to form Lake Entiat (southwest of the Grand Coulee Dam).
Motion in the Desert
It’s 7:00 AM and the air is smooth as we cruise over Arizona and we expect to see a motionless desert scene beneath us…shadows of mountain tops protrude from the earth, trying desperately to penetrate the horizon, but those days are behind them so they rest as mere pediments on the desert landscape…Then, seemingly without cause, great clouds of dust kick up from several points within our field of view and consume our attention as they bring a sense of motion to the serenity of the desert morning and cast a veil over the desert.
Frosted Fields
I’ll admit it…I’m no fan of snow…it’s cold…it’s miserable and penetrating when it’s wet…it’s painful and cutting when it’s dry…But I will also admit that it is beautiful as it frosts the land and adds an unreal glazed texture to even the most one dimensional landscapes. The country is covered in snow from the high desert of Nevada in the west to the Appalachian Mountains in the east…and it is magical…This does not slow my cursing, but it gives me pause to reflect on the unique and fragile beauty of our world…We see texture and depth in shadows and the various shades of blue that shape the contours of our vision and it looks too pristine to be real. In this perfectly snowy world, one moment of sunshine, one prolonged gust of wind, one momentary blast of radiant heat, or one tiny breath of hot air can change the landscape. Nothing is so fragile, so momentary, so unique, so beautiful, or so novel as the first snow of the season. Soon we will tire of the utter whiteness and blinding reflections, but until then we’ll enjoy this moment of gazing at the snow-frosted fields of eastern Indiana.
Turning Out – San Diego Morning
As we turn out from San Diego into the misty morning air illuminated by the warm backlight of another dawn, the wind kicks up dust into the atmosphere above the desert to the east. The monochromatic moisture that hangs in the coastal hills blends with the smooth clouds of umber rising up from the desert and colors the dreamlike texture of the landscape.
Riding the Mountain Wave
Ribbons of mountain wave turbulence roll off of the Rockies…Beneath each wave lies a tumult of weather trapped on the west side of each successive ridge looking more like rolling surf than clouds.
Yin and Yang in the Evening Sky
In the Yin and Yang of the evening sky we find a soothing balance…The complementary forces of light and dark become apparent to us as the earth’s shadow curls around our edge of the horizon…and a late thunderstorm rises through the shadows into the light. In the dark shadows of its thickest points, we see the same balance of light and dark contained within a single storm…projecting above the horizon, it introduces an element of chaos into the predictable order of twilight. Yet with all of this energy, the evening is still calm…light and dark…night and day…chaos and order…perfectly balanced.
Lost or Lucky ~ An Argument of Spirit
Peering through a hole in the clouds, we find an unfamiliar landscape and a thought occurs to me…There are two ways to process everything that passes through our lives or in front of our eyes…an argument of spirit…do we approach our situations with the question, “Am I lost?” or the perception of an opportunity, “Wow, that’s cool…how lucky am I to be here?” We wander around in a metaphorical cloud and these moments are shocks of clarity, but we fail to recognize that we are seeing opportunity through a hole in our cloud. As aviators, when we see through a real hole in a real cloud we recognize an opportunity to get our bearings straight…a mountain, a highway, a lake, or a railroad track seen for an instant can add surety to our course and help us find our way home…Opportunity…Serendipity… We recognize that we were lost in our cloud before that moment of clarity was bestowed on us…and that moment provided us with a solution, an opportunity to mesh our perception with reality and to find our way. Although our reality may be that our perceptions were wrong, this moment of shocking clarity is where problem-solving begins (and the moment our glasses become “half full”). We may not be home free, but we are equipped with what we need to regain control and take action. Back to the question, “Am I lost?”…the answer is always, “Not anymore.”
Through the clouds, we marvel at the scalloped texture of the landscape spreading south of Idaho Falls into Bonneville County, Idaho.
Roiling in the Setting Sun
A massive storm over western Tennessee roils in the setting sun, its churning and rolling clouds glow while the showers at its waist are illuminated in a cross hatch of light from the horizontal beams. Outside the storm, we keep our perspective on the world…while the storm looms large and furious, the greater influence in the evening sky is the smooth clear air filled with the warm light of an autumn sunset. Blessed with the ability to see and avoid the storm (and a destination that doesn’t require us to tangle with it), we enjoy the serenity of the sunset and continue our travel westward.
The Storms’ Embrace
Anti-cyclonic motion and shifting winds around some invisible boundary, two storms spin up above the Atlantic Ocean. Each oblivious to the other’s motion, they twist and swell sending their anvil tops downwind and in the confusion of cells, their tops converge and appear as if a momentary embrace between the two storms. ~ We all spin up and around in our personal atmospheres, exerting our forces upon the world while oblivious to the exertions of “the others”…and in some rare beautiful moments, amid all that foment, our worlds touch and we experience the singular joy of two storms embracing over a vast open sea.
Swirling Canvas
A swirling canvas of clouds provides a textured backdrop for the setting sun over northern Kansas. The warm glow illuminates the twisted layer of clouds as the day’s energy dissipates and the clouds soften and sink into night.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 