Last Friday and again this Monday, I had the sheer joy of flying one of my favorite routes in the US. San Fransisco to Portland and back again to San Fransisco. What makes this flight so fantastic? Quite simply…..”The View”.
I have always loved geology and I studied it extensively in college and from the air you can see the earth crinkled up like a paper fan and the rise and fall of the terrain very clearly. As you move north you first see Mt. Shasta slowly rising up out of the mist of the Bay Area. Then there is are several minutes of what looks like desert stretched
out before you and then magnificent Crater Lake comes into view. We once went there on vacation. What a beautiful lake, and the color of blue is magical. On our trip north the pilot came on the intercom and mentioned that we were in for a treat:….”…a beautiful view of Crater Lake this morning….” I didn’t see any heads jerk toward the window. How sad.
As you move northward you notice lake after lake from the air and the ungulating terrain covered in evergreen trees. The terrain begins to rise again and you see the Three Sisters mountain formation and then the clear cutting of timber and the reforestation far below you. In the distant haze you begin to see Mt. Hamilton and then beautiful Mt. Hood and in quick succession Mt. Adams, 
Mt. St. Helens and in the far distance Mt. Rainier.
The short one hour and 12 minutes seems far too short for my eyes to drink in the majesty that is the Cascade Mountain Range.
On the flight back today, about 30 minutes into it, you could see 6 peaks all at once, I glued my eyes and craned my neck to keep all of them in sight as long as I could. As I scanned forward another four came into view. The people in the row in front of me and behind me pulled their window shades down. How sad. I wondered if they flew this route so often, that the majesty right outside their window had grown dull and common place. There was a family with five children on board who were headed to the Magic Kingdom and not once did their parents point out the window at the mountains as they flew by. I didn’t hear one cabin attendant tell anyone what was outside the window. I found it all quite sad.
What beauty surrounds you each day?
What majesty do you pull your window shade down on as common place?
Millions and millions of people live in some of the most beautiful natural occurring sights here in the US and rarely do you ever here them talk about them.
Pull you eyes up off your electronic device and step outside of your car, and your home and turn your eyes up to the beauty that surrounds you.
