Back to Minneapolis yesterday evening. A week earlier, when we had just taken off and our plane was climbing to its cruising altitude, Rianna, our 9-year-old, who had a window seat, exclaimed, "Wow, is this ever cool!" The gentleman in the seat in front of her was amused. Turning around and addressing her through the space between the seats, he asked, or observed, "You haven't flown before, have you?"
I guess I haven't flown so much that I've stopped looking out the window and thinking it's cool. Yesterday, when the sun had set, and we were flying over I presume Iowa, or maybe eastern Nebraska, I was able to look out past the stranger snoozing in the window seat next to me and notice the way that small towns look from the air at night: two lines of crossing light that bulge near their intersection.
Earth, I think, looks better from a few miles up than it does on the surface.