The first time I flew out of
Chicago on my way back to
Connecticut I had a rediculously early flight, one of those where you have to get up (or
stay up, as the case may be) in the
wee hours to make it to the airport in the dark and slurp
bad coffee with other business travelers who could care less about
the dangers of flight. We were herded onto our tiny plane - not many going to
Hartford at that hour - fastened our seatbelts and waited with every intention of dozing until our
beverage service.
And then the plane took off. It was somewhere in the hour between 6 and 7 and I watched the sun rise over Chicago from the air. At first struck by the
homogenity of the
Chicagoland suburbs, but then was awestruck by the colors of the sky around me - gold and fire and indigo becoming
peach juice and aqua. The Sears Tower turned to ebony, the city backlit into two dimensions.
Inevitably, the man across the aisle from me worked through the whole spectacle. I'm not sure which sight I found more
amazing. The sky, or the man.