A Destination in the Clouds

BY KIERSTEN MCDEVITT

Out the window next to me, the night sky is a sea of misty ink. The airplane’s green wing light blinks back at me, occasionally illuminating the fluffy clouds we pass over. Inside, the cabin is just as dark, save for the pale blue glow of the overhead compartments. Everyone around me is either asleep or quiet. On the plane, I am nowhere at all. Yet, I am also somewhere, sitting in a cooled cabin with my headphones in, drifting 36,000 feet in the air.

When we dream about travel, we tend to fixate on our final destination, be it a tropical beach, a snowy mountain, or a loved one’s house; we don’t typically celebrate the in-between. But a flight is its own destination. As I sit in the dim cabin, listening to the smooth drone of the plane’s engine, I find a place where I have nothing but time to disconnect from the buzzing world below and get excited about where I’m heading. On the way back, it will become a place where I can reminisce on what I’ve just left behind, prolonging the feeling of being on a trip.

The flight is a place where my adventure both begins and ends. I enter its unique exhilaration when the runway races by and the buildings and cars around me spiral ever smaller into the distance. When the big metal bird touches back down onto different ground, I know that as soon as it stops moving, I will get to set my own feet down somewhere new.

During my visit in the sky, I might enjoy the bagel that I rushed to buy before boarding, I may listen to a long playlist, or I could meet a new friend. You never know the conversation you might strike up with the person next to you while you watch the same movie on your miniature seat-back screens, or when you complain to one another about how long the plane has been taxiing on the runway.

Yes, the seats are a bit crammed, my ears are popping uncomfortably, and I can’t wait to step off into my new destination. But when I’m on a plane, I feel lucky because it means that I am going somewhere, and until I get there, I get to hang out in the stratosphere, staring at the stars of Orion that hover just left of the wing. It’s in the special moments like these that I simply don’t want to get off.

KIERSTEN MCDEVITT