Final Approach

“Ladies and gentlemen, the Captain has turned on the Fasten Seat Belt sign. ... We suggest that you keep your seat belt fastened throughout the flight, as we may ... an announcement with local time and temperature at the destination airport, ...
“The journey, of course, is not quite the destination. Not even for pilots. Still, we are lucky to live in an age in which many of us, on our busy way to wherever we are going, are given these hours in the high country, when lightness is lent to us, where the volume of our home is opened and a handful of our oldest words – ‘journey’, ‘road’, ‘wing’, ‘water’; ‘earth’ and ‘air’, ‘sky’ and ‘city’ and ‘night’ – are made new. From aeroplanes we occasionally look up and are briefly held by the stars or the firmament of blue. But mostly we look down, caught by the sudden gravity of what we’ve left, and by thoughts of reunion, drifting like clouds over the half-bright world.”
Read less