Thoughts from a Plane: Nature Post #6

Here we are again, Birmingham. But this time I’m so far away. Up on a plane I look for you. It’s a beautiful world from here. Nothing seems to be broken up on United. I just wanted to spend some time thinking about you and the city in ariel view today, thinking about the city as a whole. While on my second flight of the day from Boston back to Pittsburgh I wrote you something:

I am in an innocent place. On a plane. I begin to see waters split the grayish brown land into oval paths. This is when I know I’m home. Pittsburgh. There is desert-colored dust, like limestones in the Mediterranean. It feels like I’m minutes away from vacation, on my way to the ground. I didn’t know I’d miss it. Dark brown hills of dirt pool out of the earth coming further into town, adjacent to dust piles. The houses between the lands neatly planted by God, evenly spaced lawns and hedges. It’s a beautiful world from up here. The highways and waters laid out in the same swivel of threes. I wonder if God plucked and prodded his hands into the thirsty dirt himself, or sent someone on a plane to see what it would look like laid before them. My face is on the plane window. United. Far off to the northwest there are thick white puffs. Too opaque to be clouds. I guess: snow nestled into crevices of mountains. I guess: Laurel Highlands. Apalachia. Everything is peaceful past the rush of wind on the wings. There are no rapids breaking at rocks, from here. No brittle branches breaking off dying trees. Even the sandy-colored bark, dry in between fields of corn rows, doesn’t look helpless. Somehow I am standing in the middle of the sky blowing wind through the bald trees, feeding oxygen into their lungs. Remembering them. Remembering themselves. Evergreens stacked just behind the sinking, bare trees; they are a forest next to a barn next to a highway next to a wheat field next to a terminal, a sign, a bridge, a light, a cone and a flag welcoming us. United. My hands sweep the city. Make love to the open. Make love to the closed. Make love of home, so beautiful from everywhere.