Flying to Bodrum via Istanbul

I am flying high above a meandering river surrounded by lowlands, divided like a patchwork quilt into geometric plots which dovetail together neatly at the corners. The colors of these quilt patches range from a dusky lavender,  beige and moss green to a pearl grey, here and there interrupted by neat rows of steely pinheads which are actually the roofs of buildings lining the streets of small towns and cities.

The clouds below hang suspended over the landscape, looking as though a master set designer had ordered them so created and arranged to set the scene. Their shadows make numerous ink blotches on the earthly quilt beneath. 

The captain has just announced that we are flying at 11,000 meters, and also told us that it is raining lightly at our destination – Istanbul.  Never mind…the sun is shining up here at 11,000 meters, and I will not leave the airport, but instead sail on to the next port…..Bodrum.  Weather.com has promised me that in Bodrum there is 0% chance of precipitation for the next seven days, with temperatures hovering between 27-30 degrees.  Bonnie Raitt is singing about rain, metaphorically, through my headphones: “Cry like a rainstorm, howl like the wind…” but that doesn’t dampen my sunshine!

Wow!  I just glanced out the window again and the quilted earth has disappeared!  Now I see an infinite expanse of undulating white cotton clouds stretching across the horizon.  It looks like a giant mattress, so soft and inviting….I must be tired.  Really, it seems incredible that friends, family, cities, mountains, oceans, rivers are living, breathing, standing, rolling, flowing underneath that atmospheric blanket. 

Again…the view is changing.  The first mountains are appearing.  The surface of the earth resembles a crocodile’s skin in both texture and color. These are very low mountains blanketed in green – only the ridges protrude sharp-edged and brown in color.  The clouds have thinned here…independent-minded clouds that prefer to drift solo rather than mass together like the sheep-like clouds in the giant flock we just passed.

The crocodile must have slithered back into the mud, since now I see a stripy quilt below with a tremendously long serpent of a river wending its way through it. We are back over the mattress again, but this time the surface is tufted and quilted into a pattern of honey-combed cells….the view reminds me of Georgia O’Keefe’s fantastic painting of clouds seen from above, inspired by her first airplane ride. 

Distant journeys begin and end like this…with an aerial perspective – the so-called ‘big picture.’ It serves as a metaphor for the way in which we ought to approach any new destination, seeing the specific point on the globe we have targeted within the broader context of the geographic landscape, country, and region in which it is situated.   This view is a significant one when we consider that we animals are all shaped by the geography we inhabit.  It is a slow, evolutionary process, but the earth has shaped us and made us adapt to its contours and climatic conditions.  (There is frost on my window now!)

Now I see the sea beneath the clouds, and tiny “toy” boats are positioned here and there on its glass surface like the strategic positioning of the little plastic boats in the Battleship game.  I spot them when the clouds permit me a view all the way down to the sea. 

We are landing now in Istanbul, and the Bosphorus looms below…the city is just beneath us!  Breathtaking!