The Aerial Horizon
Forget where your feet are and simply enjoy the view.
Air Masses Meet
Air Masses Meet…in advance of the season’s change and suddenly the cold air is briefly upon us.
A Storm on the Horizon
They grow innocuously from rising molecules fomenting as temperatures rise, unnoticed until they reach a mass and intensity that releases their fury on the once placid earth beneath them. They electrify the atmosphere and cut the land with knifelike showers dragged along their course. We watch in wonder the evolving life of the storm with gift of distance.
The Road Home
We spend half our lives on the road and in faraway places, seldom processing the distance or the accumulated time, but always aware of the separation. The splendor and allure of the aerial horizon with its variable underlying patterns of earth, sea, and clouds and the constant relative motion of the heavens above, in varying degrees of visibility, keep us driving forward, focused and engaged in our tasks. We manage the energy state of our ships and artfully move through space…until at last we turn homeward…Normally, we remain locked in our tight focus until we see the lights of home through the windscreen and settle into our homecoming routines…Sometimes, we find ourselves riding in the backseat, watching the airways slide across the textured earth below as the sun melts into the horizon and we allow ourselves to think of both worlds at once. We ease along the road home with a familiarity that fills us with comfort and warmth.
Rounding the Sun
As we take our first steps into the new year, we pause to notice a sundog echoing the light of the rising sun, as though attempting to capture its splendor…A metaphor for holding the light in our souls as we embark on a new year. Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and a year filled with light, good will, peace , and kindness.
Nexus
In the places where here earth and heaven meet, we find a window to our souls and all the world that defines our passions.
The Message in Our Wake
To those passing this way before us, we recognize the value of the messages left in your wake. The trembling molecules of air and water vapor show us the nature of your path…from stillness to laminar flow, to the moment that their excitation cools in the rapidly slowing atmospheric river of expanding gas…we imagine the form of the unseen ship meeting the currents of the air and we prepare to skim the advancing ripples, forewarned and sensing a connection with unseen travelers…communicating through visual and tactile cues on the waves we travel.
The Little Big Things
I saw the musical in Soho recently and, if in London, it is one that I would recommend everyone see. Imagine being deprived of doing a thing that you love, moving forward, you recognize the little things that bring you joy…those are Big Things that make you whole. Those things may change with life experience. Riding home in the back of a Boeing 777, looking out the window on departure, I see a thin line of vapor following the laminar flow of air across the wing, from leading edge slat to trailing edge flap. My joy over this little thing was palpable…from the front of the airplane, we may see very little of our wings and engines and this sight, that may be common to people watching from the back, is something that we rarely have occasion to see. It is both fascinating and ephemeral. It is the sort of little thing that can lead to big things such as following a passion for aviation into a career in flight. Recognize the little big things, embrace and share the joy you feel, and if the opportunity ever presents itself, go see the musical.
Time, Memory, and Emotion
The relationship between time, memory, and emotion is purposefully ill-defined. Presented with an image, or a smell, or simply the way a September morning’s light strikes the earth, we are taken back to a moment in time…more than a memory, as we feel it all again…let it sink in…the vague chill over our bodies, the ringing in our ears, and the feeling of uncertainty…feeling it all over again, I know we will never forget…
Echoes of Light
A drop of molten light echoed in the atmosphere, adding definition to the edges of earth. In a narrow view of a wide horizon, the effect of the sunrise becomes clear in a moment of transition along the deep shadows of the Sierra Madre Oriental range. We witness light falling toward earth in the illumination of dissipating vapor as day breaks and night recedes.
A Hole in the Heavens
We experience the increasing turbulence of a summer afternoon as storms crop up around us and we look to the towering nimbus clouds as they cast their ominous shadows, some shrouded by lenticular clouds in soft webs of vaporous netting that stretch as the underlying clouds grow up into the tropopause, disrupting the serenity of the smooth cloud tops. All around us is drama and we take in the details…the sky devoid of comfort…but then we witness a sucker hole holding its subtle heart-shaped form in the midst of the afternoon’s foment…a void in which its most striking feature is the absence of drama and we draw solace from the unobtrusive places where serenity exists amid the chaos.
Overflight
There is a dizzying feeling in watching birds and airplanes fly overhead, the closer we look, the more details we see, the more captivated in the overflight we become and all sense of earth evaporates beneath our feet…we become part of the sky, filled with the energy and emotion that comes from flight.
Intersections of The Way
Moving along in a sandwich of space, we slide along the way, mindful of the separation between earth and sky. As we narrow our view, looking toward the aerial horizon, time seems to accelerate away from the stillness of our broad aerial perspective. Meanwhile, a coincident traveler casts a shadow of contrail on the earth below, intersecting the way ahead and reminding us that we live in both worlds, heaven and earth, as we move through this space, yet always tethered to the horizon that we pursue with the unrelenting passion.
Effervescent Spirit
Anne Lamont once, in a commencement speech, referred to laughter as “carbonated holiness” and that thought has stuck in my consciousness…When we think of carbonation, our thoughts, more aptly, are of the effervescence we witness when a trapped gas escapes solution, but that is merely the release. The reality is, more so, that the nature of a thing is so embedded in our world that we don’t recognize its presence until in a moment of effervescence, it escapes and delivers a fizz to our souls, experienced in a subtle sense of excitement and elation as we pass through a certain time and space…oneness with our world revealing itself along the ragged edge of an earthly solution. Wisps of vapor extend from clouds, simultaneously escaping the solution and inviting us into the revelation of the holiness of spirit hidden within each element of our world.
Touchstones
We all have our touchstones, the relics of the past, distant or recent, those items that tie our emotions to a moment, a feeling, or a person that we long to see or experience again… things are but things, and I marvel at the emotional trauma that we self inflict by merging the possessions of our lost loved ones with their identities…sometimes a sofa is just a piece of furniture that grandma needed to fill an empty space in a room…sometimes a rock is just something they picked up along their way… the things we collect may create a burden for those we leave behind. God help my children if after I leave this earth, all of my collected rocks and travel trinkets in which my memories rest become confused with pieces of me…sometimes a rock is just a rock and our memories die with us…unless…unless we share our stories with the living while we still have the time. Our spirits should not be trapped in our possessions, better that they be freed with the stories we share and the gift of truly knowing us…the secret of leaving a legacy instead of a box of things…
Revisiting Highway 160
Following the highway into the resounding silence of the high desert, accelerating away from the noise of the world behind, our pace increases as though funneling through the mesas on the left and right, their low contours guiding our journey westward from Dennehotso toward Kayenta. Athough we are a million miles from home, a strange and soothing sense of comfort overtakes us in this patch of sky…We find ourselves in a place of sublime balance where the way moves through us as we, in turn, flow through it, all sensations, thoughts, and emotions uniting as we experience the essence of this thin place.
Climbing into the Day
An o’dark thirty launch into the early morning darkness from a high plateau,m…Halfway to the heavens, we rapidly climb into the bright white light of day. Awash in morning light and forgetting the darkness we left behind, we look back toward earth and follow the illuminated path of clouds as it flows toward the horizon, defining the line between light and dark.
Eyes Toward the Heavens
Casting my eyes toward the heavens, I feel that I have been resting too long upon the earth and the weight of the atmosphere bearing down upon my soul, reminds me how I long to be floating weightless among the clouds.
Oneness in the Void
Remembering a long vanished sea, we look upon the face of No Man’s Mesa…at the edge of the void, a negative space whose long edges were carved by the lap of recessing waters and epochal run-off from the high plain, creating rivulets of earth leading to the valley below. The contours define what once appeared an abyss, giving it dimensions and a character that fascinates us replacing the vanished earth and sea with an overwhelming sense of oneness.
Looking the Other Way
When everyone else looks right to see some well recognized and valued spectacle, sometimes the greatest value comes with the surprise of looking left into the space that is ignored or forgotten. It may or may not have a name, but in the shadows of the spectacle, it presents a subtle glow that flows from its hidden intricacies, untouched and unadmired, radiating a sense of worth that comes from within. This place lifts us and helps us recognize that value may be solitary, dwelling in the shadows, or within us, an unrecognized singularity that is all the more beautiful because of our secret perception.
The Art of Besting
Taking a back seat isn’t all bad. It forces a perspective upon us, showing us that we cannot always be in control, that the micro transitions throughout the day are changes that we may seamlessly pass through as we cope with minor inconveniences and look for the best in our transient situations…As we refuse to be mired in any self-imposed suffering, with the lifting of a window shade, or the opening of our eyes, we allow ourselves a moment of joy and we sit back, relax, and enjoy the view.
The Aerial Horizon – Photography
The Aerial Horizon 