Why I Used to Love to Fly

When I was younger, I never understood why so many people complained about air travel--I always thought it was a total blast. I have been an experienced flyer since I was about one year old, and I have always loved it. I desperately wanted to be a pilot when I was a teenager, but was talked out of it, damn my high school counselor... And then with the past few years of increasingly congested airports, increased security, and increased general grumpiness of all air travelers and airport personnel alike, I, too, began to feel a hint of crankiness at the suggestion of flying anywhere. Last year I was unfortunate enough to fly out on the morning when they first instated the “no gels or liquids” rule, and all holy hell broke out. It was easily my most unpleasant and harrowing day of travel ever. I arrived at my destination a whopping 5 hours late after much suffering, the detailed description of which I will generously spare you.

But yesterday’s experience brought back to me everything I love about flying--getting to meet new people, getting to watch a whole lot of new people, checking out the intriguing differences in architecture and decor of different airports, and of course, the thrill of taking off and the brilliant view afforded by a substantially increased altitude.

I arrived at Phoenix airport a little too early, so I decided to check out a promising museum-type artsy fartsy shop. It paid off--I acquired a shiny new pair of funky glass earrings, and I spent about 20 minutes talking to the young man who worked there. He was an immensely interesting individual to converse with. He immigrated here with his family 7 years ago from Somalia (actually, they had lived for several years in Kenya prior to that to escape the strife in his home country). I asked him if there was a long waiting list or if it was otherwise difficult to leave, and he told me that his father used to work for the UN when they lived in Africa, so it really expedited things. We talked about a lot of subjects--immigration, racism, education, cultural differences, pursuing one’s dreams--and I was thoroughly enjoying it all, but I had to excuse myself to go sit down because my knee was yelling at me.

After finding a seat at the terminal, I found more amiable people. A man plopped down right next to me (not one seat over as we are so inclined to do in this part of the world) and immediately launched into some friendly banter. A nice guy. He had a bit of a funny haircut in the back, because as he admitted to me and another woman, he had drunk too much vodka the night before and somehow decided that that was an auspicious time to ask a friend to cut his hair. Then the PA system suddenly announced that we all needed to sing happy birthday to someone waiting for our flight to board. A rowdy group of young women four rows over exhorted everybody to sing along, trying with all their might to embarrass the nice young man whose birthday it was. He was traveling alone and didn't even know the women who had spontaneously decided he needed a birthday serenade. It made me laugh.

Once up in the plane, I only read about 4 pages from the book I brought along; I spent nearly the entire flight with my nose pressed up against the window reveling in the landscapes and cloudscapes passing by. On a short flight such as this one was, you don’t gain too much altitude, so the land below is clear and easily identifiable if you know your landmarks. I was very pleased with myself in that I could identify so many major landmarks between the Colorado River and the California coast. A lot of this stems from having worked so extensively in the southern California wilderness. It was a beautiful sight. Landforms take on a whole other personality and geology is blatant and obvious when you are 10,000 feet up in the air.

After the much-diminished Colorado river snaked and doubled its way underneath us, we passed over the Imperial Valley. First there were the Chocolate Mountains, their jaggedy peaks disintegrating into miles of alluvial buildup, with sinuous and regular drainage patterns making a sparse necklace spread at their feet. The interwoven drainages led right up to the sprawl of the Algodones Sand Dunes that extend for dozens of miles. The dunes don’t look terribly dunelike or wavy from the air; viewed all together from such a distance they looked more like the corrugated skin of some giant dun-colored reptile. Immediately abutting the dunes and the canals that separated the alluvial spread of the Chocolate Mountains was the multicolored patchwork of fields that define the Imperial Valley. It looked like an earthy version of a Mondrian painting in varying hues of green, gold, and brown. The Salton sea glimmered dully at the north end of the agricultural zone, and went on forever. The desert showed its face abruptly again at the western edge of the fields and canals, a reminder that without the influx of imported water and constant human maintenance, this valley would revert in a matter of minutes to the thriving furnace of desert habitat it once was.

The desert of the Imperial Valley looks particularly bleak from the air. I know from experience that it contains a wealth of flora and wacky desert animals, but from the airplane it looked like nothing more than a yawning stretch of pale mud flats. This level expanse, punctuated only by the Superstition Mountains--more like hills; they look like mute nubs from the air-- gradually morphed into a series of low hills and ridges that led up to the mountain range that demarcates the border of San Diego County. The hills here look ancient; they are so eroded that they are more drainage than hill, a collection of skeletal ridges and thin spines surrounded by a mesh of deep interwoven ravines and drainage systems. They looked exactly like a washed-out version of those computer-generated fractal images that were so popular a few years ago. After these hills, the land began to gradually rise up into the rocky peaks of the Jacumba Mountains that surround the steep In-Ko-Pah grade winding up toward San Diego.
"Lake of Fire" copyright 2006 Kerry Mitchell

The boulders and rocks that loom so large when you are on the ground next to them look like completely different beasts from the air. They don’t even look like pebbles--they look as if someone scattered rock salt over the hills. As the hills got higher, that someone mixed in some dried oregano with the rock salt. A mere smattering of green specks. With a little more altitude, it started looking like someone had occasionally smeared the landscape with a paintbrush of glue so that the oregano stuck to the hills in larger swaths. Gradually, the vegetation increased until the the land was coated with a thick nubby green blanket. As we flew further over the mountains, the green collected and pooled in the ravines in crowded masses of trees.

Suddenly in the midst of all this rocky green profusion, Interstate 8 sprang into view. From there I could identify the 94 snaking its way down south, and along it I could even see the dirt lot and tiny school in Campo where I once taught independent study for Mountain Empire School District. From there, I followed the 94 with my eyes until it passed Potrero, that lovely rural settlement in the hills where the geeks descend twice a year for their Medieval war reenactments. I could also see up north of the 8 where Sunrise Highway streaked along the crest of the Laguna Mountains. The sprawling green meadows that interrupted the thick forests were shining and bright. I swear I could almost see the group of rocks I sat upon just a few weeks ago the last time I was there. East of this, riding the very edge of the mountain range, lay Thing Valley, a short swipe of paler green within the dark piney-ness. From the air, it looks like a shallow depression, even though its eastern ridge rises a thousand feet from the valley floor. The other side of the same ridge falls over four thousand feet straight down into the Anza Borrego desert; it is the last line of defense for the Lagunas and their thirsty flora.

With one glance I could simultaneously see the observatory on Mount Laguna and the larger observatory perched on top of Palomar Mountain. Lake Henshaw gleamed in between, and to the northeast, Los Coyotes Reservation stood with its tall peaks jabbing at the sky. Then, as I continued my visual tour of the 94 freeway, I saw the cloudy blue of Otay Lakes below, looking a bit shrunken, and north of them a few cars crawling to a halt at the Border Patrol checkpoint as you near the T-intersection at Jamacha Junction.

Once over San Diego proper, I tried to find as many of my friend’s houses as I could, but we were going too fast to really be sure most of the time. I would have easily been able to identify Kiki’s house, except for the fact that we flew directly over it--as you will also notice if you ever go to visit her. I discovered something I hadn't noticed before as we began our descent in earnest over Balboa Park--the Aerospace Museum has its title grandly painted in huge letters across its circular roof. Something solely for the benefit of air travelers. It is only fitting.