I have written about flying at night before. I’m not sure if I can accurately portray how mesmerizing flying is for me. On the east coast, every parcel of land has some story. I don’t think the same is true for the west. Or, if it is, the stories appear greatly simplified. There is so much space, so much possibility for every permutation of human experience, and it is that possibility that makes me sick to my stomach. I want to know what it all means, I want to know what it’s all for, but I can’t fathom it.
As one flies out of San Fransisco there is a ridge beyond which civilization immediately ceases. Yet even there can be found hundreds of miles of intersecting dirt trials or roads, weaving along the ridge tops, snaking to the valleys. Occasionally, every few miles at least, there are structures. I don’t know what kind of structures. They might be houses. People living 15 miles from anything – not like Goshen where you have to drive 6 miles from a grocery store, I mean 15 miles from the nearest paved road. What is life like there? Why? It’s so dry, so sparse. But..it’s strangely alluring.
Before the midwest, where the endless square grids are completely full of enormous farms, you start to enter a region where the circular farms reign. I have decided that something about the climate of the area makes giant circles more practical for irrigation. Whatever the case, there is a region where you see a circle only once every few miles. It doesn’t even look like roads go there. Whose farms are these? Who tends them? What is it like?
When you go further, to the midwest, while the agricultural use is almost 100%, you still have nothing but space. Sure, there’s corn there, or wheat, who knows what (what is it?), but there’s one solitary farmhouse, then a few miles of land. What is life like in that farmhouse? There isn’t a Wal Mart for miles. It’s perfectly flat. The sun beats down, and things grow, but what do the people do?
The possibilities, infinite possibilities. I have a hard time justifying the maintenance of one specific form of life for so long. There are so many permutations of the human experience, even in just this country. I don’t know how to handle it. As we flew between Chicago and Baltimore last night after sunset (I recognized the Windy City from overhead), we passed a sprinkling of lights. For a moment, I didn’t know if I was looking at the ground or the heavens. Constellations of humanity’s presence, even in these remote areas, illuminated the ground. Though it was late and I was tired, I got my bearings back. Recognizing which way was up was not, however, a superior experience. I let, no forced, my mind to drift back to a world where those lights were in the sky, stars that I had never seen before, clusters of unknown thousands of worlds, glowing, flickering in the cosmos. It was infinite.
Words 
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