Flight

There is something in my being.  I don’t know precisely what, but there is something that finds freedom in fight.  I don’t fly for a living anymore, and I haven’t for an eternity, but still I can close my eyes and escape to a world where flight is real.  I can see the land rush beneath my wings, I can feel the freedom of the air, the power of the engines, the joy of leaving the land behind.

I know not everyone sees this as special, in fact I would suspect many would imagine me a bit deranged in what I see in my minds eye.  I can listen to a wonderful symphony and in the midst I close my eyes and be transported to towering canyons of cumulous clouds where I soar and turn with grace through the air.  I become one with the ideal that John Gillespie Magee, Jr created for me when I first read his poem as a young teen, or heard it on the television as the stations signed off at night.

Whenever the stresses of life seem to weigh me down I slip away and imagine what it was like when there was only the sounds of the winds in the wires and the rumble of the engine to guide you through a vast and open space.