Flying

We waited for the plane to arrive...taking us on the final trip from Chicago to Providence...each person in his own world. I thought of the "Humans of New York" series in which interviews with people on the street reveals and shares a bit of that inner, own world. Each person with his own story...or part of a story. Yet, here, waiting at boarding gate A18, the stories are untold. How much richer it would be if we knew them all.


And, then, off we go into the "wild, blue yonder"....well, not so blue. And how so many of us view it as an annoyance when the first sustained, heavier than air flight took place in 1903...113 years ago. And now it is such a commonplace. On the other hand, as a species, humans are so adaptable...alas if the earth itself does not prove to be quite so adaptable.




On the plane, I take in the cloud and land formations (the city of Chicago...adapted to the urban grid) but mainly bury myself in the story of Alexander von Hunboldt...the first person to explore, understand, and, then, popularize the concept of nature as an interconnected whole in which all of the parts relate.


And whose diagrams showed, for the first time, ecological zones in which plants, animals, soils, insects, rainfall or lack thereof were interrelated. And, for the first time, wrote of how poor land use results in the depletion of the natural resources that make human life possible.



So reading about the earth while flying over it at 30,000 feet. A wonder, it is, quite worth the wait at A18 Midway Airport.




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Location:In the air