Over the weekend, I had the pleasure of enjoying the wonder and magic of flight once more.

I spent 24 years in the Air Force, 21 of them in active flying positions. My first sortie (that counted) was April 1st, 1997, and it’s been less than a year since my last.

Sure, sitting in the back of a modified air refueler isn’t as fancy as the thrills and joys fighter jocks experience on the daily.

But it’s still breathtaking to look out at the skies and the sunrise across the ocean, or sunset over the mountains.

Civilian airliners are a little more polished and comfortable than the military aircraft I’m used to, but the view out the window is much the same. I jotted down my thoughts by hand in my journal while we climbed:

First time flying after retiring from the Air Force. It’s such a thrill to watch the ground fall away, to see the massive buildings become tiny, like toys or models on a wide train set.
When the wisps of clouds slide past the window, obscuring the view now and then until it all goes white or grey… and then you rise into the vast expanse of blue, with a rippling, puffy blanket of cloud spread beneath you.
The plane banks, and impossibly you find yourself staring straight down at the earth far below; you feel like you could fall forever, but somehow you stay aloft. The engines whine and rumble, and you feel the thrust vibrating through the seat, through the floor, through the whole strange structure that has just thrown off gravity’s shackles and leapt into the sun’s embrace.
Higher and higher you climb as the ground changes from a detailed diorama of life seen from afar to a pastiche of blended colors. The ocean looks ruffled but solid, a widespread pool of dried glue, firm and unyielding. The clouds that once seemed distant but tangible are now revealed to be ethereal mists, like the memory of the place you left behind, and the expectations for where you are now headed.