If I want to believe in impossibilities, air travel enables this. At 33,000 feet, hurtling through frigid, rarified air at 170 MPH, I'm warm and comfortable, with a Bloody Mary under my buckled belt. I look down at arrow-straight interstates, wandering rivers, miniscule farms and great, vast tracts of undeveloped land–this seems crazy, impossible. Charlotte to Denver in 3 hours? Who can imagine this–that all this metal and flesh can even get off the ground, let alone sail 1,200 miles while we sleep, read, eat, drink, do crosswords, watch TV shows on the backs of our neighbor's seats. We skim over the lives of millions, each with his or her own relationships, struggles, hopes, angers, joys.

Shouldn't we drop–too much for empty air to bear? Just the weight of our cumulative worries and heartaches should bring us down.

We lose sight of what should astound us. The remarkable becomes commonplace. What's happened to amazement?

Text, image and audio © 2011 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved. 

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