View From Google Earth

Some people prefer aisle seats when they are traveling by air. There’s more leg room and getting out is much easier when no one else is required to make room.

I prefer the window seats. My fascination with the view from on high started from listening to my dad tell stories describing the experience of being an airline passenger. He reported that while you are speeding along at hundreds of miles per hour the overall landscape view appears to be motionless. He also offered the solution to this paradox by lining up the edge of the wing with something on the ground and compare the speed of that changing line with a fast moving vehicle. I couldn’t wait to get a chance to see that for myself.

Maybe that’s where the pull of the window seat came from; it’s buried in my subconscious mind even though the long awaited test was performed and verified over 60 years ago.

What I see now is maps without political demarcations. Montreal, Quebec looks a lot like Burlington, VT.  It isn’t obvious from afar that they speak different languages and use different road sign conventions. Instead they look alike; it appears as if the people there have a lot in common.  The clouds, the rivers, the color of the fields are the same.

Changing perspectives once in a while is a healthy act. Especially if doing so replaces habitual perceptions with higher reality and makes clear the way things really are.