Night Time

The night was cool and dark along the Hudson River as we flew south towards the city.  I had been up since 5 am, but sleep was not even a thought.  The world lay out before me as black velvet covered with diamonds.  I was not yet in the Air Force, but I was in the element that was the center of my dreams.  Little did I know, nor could I imagine, how the beauty of this experience would guide me to choices that would shape my future.

I had started work for a small commuter airline, while waiting my time to enter the Air Force.  They would let me get onto flights that were not full and travel to any of the destinations they served.  By the time I was off work the only flights remaining were to JFK.  I would make it a habit to fly down and back on the last flights of the day.

There, in front of us, was Yonkers, then the Bronx, then Queens, Brooklyn, and the Airport.  The airport was massive, and we were just a tiny plane.  It seemed to take forever from landing until we were at the terminal.  Inside for a soda and then home.  Those were the days without TSA, without terror, without fear.

At night, the world is a mystery.  It is covered in black, with beautiful twinkling lights.  Where people are they live in light, where there are no lights there is isolation.

Just two years later I was flying a C-130 carrying supplies to the North slope of Alaska.  We would take off from Eielson Air Force Base, in Fairbanks, Alaska, and fly North to one of five lonely, remote and isolated radar sites.  There was nothing between us and them for 300 miles.  It was black, cold, and foreboding.  At the time they were just building the Alaskan Pipeline, and you could see their lights off to the East.

The night sky in Alaska was unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I am at a loss for the words to adequately describe it.  Above us was heaven, covered with the silken robes of the Aura Borealis floating across the sky as if being blown by some cosmic wind.  You cannot see the beauty of the heavens without knowing there is a God.  I am sorry for those who have never looked up and seen God before them.

Night is a wondrous time to fly.