Just to the west and about 35,000 feet straight up is a super highway skyway for commercial jets. They fly at five o’clock in the afternoon with conrials streaming white, then yellow, then orange of the setting sun. All in a row, sometimes seven or eight, they fly at each other’s flank safely at several miles distant, yet from where I stand it seems only a few feet. Wings and fuselage reflect sunlight, first in a bright white spark of light and then in a cooling yellow gold in the lost light of the sunset. The conrail nearly seems fluffy like a frayed cotton tread spun out against a brilliant Prussian blue sky. It’s rush hour at 35K ft.
At the head of each conrail are 100 plus people seated in rows of five or six or nine, all facing the same direction, knees bent at right angles, none acknowledging the existence of the others, some with drinks, some asleep. They fly on, headed north, having left Tampa or Miami or Orlando an hour earlier, and now are probably still hours from New York or Chicago or Boston.
I wonder if one person on each plane or one person from among all the planes on any given day looks out a window of a passing jet and looks at me. I wonder if there is anyone on either plane that I have ever known, perhaps wanted to see again but never could and now this passing is as close as we ever come.
Mostly though, I am amazed that jets fly and that people may move about the Earth so quickly.