Going Home
An amazing sensation when a plane rises above a storm, lifts clear of the clouds and suddenly a fierce sun rises in a flawless blue sky. Below roils a lake of white as big as the ocean, as if the surface of an endlessly churning sea. There is no sensation of the incredible speed at which we travel, save the occasional shimmy as we cut through turbulent air. The clouds break a bit as we ride higher on nothing, displaying a world scribbled across with... what... rivers, canyons, great crevices along the faulted world... or maybe just a simple trick of cloud shadow. Some are too straight to be anything but highway, yet it seems at eight miles in the sky a man made path would be impossible to see. All gather here on this calculated risk, all age, all race, all occupation, all motivation and all of the seven dwarfs. The trip silently binds us, a contract to live or die together. "Safer than driving," they say. They speak true, statistically. But nothing can change the reality that