Autumn is the only time I willingly book a window seat. Today’s approach into Newark had us flying over the Delaware Water Gap on a clear sunny day. The leaves are beginning to change — I saw dots of yellow and orange and red bursting out of a field of green. It made me reach back for into some old neurons for the word “pointillism“, which I learned on a grade-school field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago standing in front of Seurat‘s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte“.
I don’t take the window on every Fall flight. It’s only a Northeast/Upper Midwest thing. You need maples for those vibrant colors. The oaks down South are more brown than bright. And the tree breaks that Plains farmers plant between their crop fields aren’t wide enough, aren’t broad enough to fill your field of view with color.
Even in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, not every airport serves up the colors. I’ll always take a window flying in and out of White Plains/Westchester County (HPN) and Detroit (DTW). However, the eastern approaches into Milwaukee and Chicago over Lake Michigan — usually among my favorites — don’t do anything for me in Autumn. It’s often said that Fall colors are Nature’s way of paying us for the dreariness of Winter. For those of us flying, perhaps it’s a way to pay us forward for the snow delays we know we’ll start living through after those leaves fall.
2 comments on “Leaf Peeping From Above”
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This is probably old news to you, but I was recently delighted by a United pilot’s decision to take my flight on what he called the “SFO bay cruise.” After getting approval from air traffic control, the plane ascended to, perhaps, only 4000 feet? We then flew north right above the Golden Gate, then turned south and flew down the bay on our way to Tuscon. It was a bit foggy, but it was still a spectacular view and a really new flying experience. I felt like a little kid peering out the window for the first time.
When the Missus and I fly together on vacation, and we both have to check bags, we each put half of our own stuff in the other’s suitcase. That way, if one bag gets lost and the other one makes it (which has happened more often than you’d believe) neither of us is completely out of luck. We’ll have at least HALF of our stuff, which makes it easier to manage until the airline coughs up the other bag.