for spacious skies

in the last week of march i flew on a chilly morning from Detroit to Chicago, changed planes and went on to San Jose via Los Angeles. not the most efficient routing, but the most economical. it was overcast in chicago but, hoping for the best, i got a window seat with an unobstructed view.

somewhere over the plains the cloud cover ended with an smooth north-south edge and soon we were flying over snow-capped richly green mountains, whose lower slopes were entirely covered with brilliant yellow bloom. a shrub of some sort. the pilot announced that Santa Fe could be seen on the right side of the plane, and Albuquerque on the left. i was sitting on the left. i don't know Albuquerque at all, so there was nothing i could pick out beyond the sandy grid of small houses.

next, we were over Flagstaff, Arizona, with the Grand Canyon on the right. on the left was a clear view of something i had never seen: the Arizona Meteor Crater, a huge perfect circle in the desert. i remembered a fancy english word for this: "astrobleme." one of the large lakes is the middle of Sweden is an astrobleme, i.e. created by a meteorite crashing to earth.

then more desert, more mountains and suddenly i saw the towering antennae and round white dome of the observatory on Mount Wilson, in the San Gabriel mountains, just north of L.A. Patrice, John, and i had quite an adventure there, when the mix of radio frequencies interfered with the automatic security system of the car, and we couldn't get it started.

landing at LAX is a familiar experience and i was happy to see the palm trees at the edge of the runway. as we took off, there was the deep blue pacific edged in white breakers and the Santa Monica pier and the green coastal range mountains, which continuted underneath until we landed in San Jose. i stepped out of the terminal into warm sunshine, with ornamental fruit trees in bloom and thick california poppies orange along the roadways.

after four happy California days with Jeremy, Aekyong, and Tamara, i returned back east, leaving on a warm, sunny morning. the plane headed north out of San Jose and there was San Francisco with its gleaming white skyscrapers and its three bridges, with the Golden Gate hazy in the distance. next we were over Sacramento, identifiable by the wide curving river and clumsy "golden" bridge (painted a flat ocher) and the white neoclassical facade of the domed state capitol at the end of its rectangle of green park.

then the Great Valley's flat checkerboard of huge brown and green fields spread out below, growing a large percentage of America's produce and exporting a good deal of it worldwide too.

Suddenly the words and tune of "O beautiful, for spacious skies..." came into my mind, though it was too early in the spring to see any amber waves of grain.

and then it struck me.

the day before in the San Jose Mercury i'd read a an article on the dramatic increase of people applying for food stamps as a result of the recession. it included the fact that 28 million people are currently enrolled in the program nationwide. 28 million people living with incomes at the poverty level, the majority of them children. and illegal immigrant agricultural workers do not qualify for food stamps.

this while we are spending how much every day on the occupation of Iraq?

okay, the title of the song is "America the Beautiful" not "the United States the Beautiful." that's it, i thought, i'm proud of my continent, even if i can't be proud of the greedy culture of my country.

we passed over appropriately named the Sierra Nevada and saw the silver-blue sheen of Lake Tahoe nestled in its mountains. as the plane sloped down into Reno, a large mountain with white ski trails peppered with little moving dots came into view. as if to confirm that spring skiing was in progress, two women boarded the plane on crutches. up again: many more mountains; some desert salt flats; clouds over the Rockies; and then vast white snow-covered fields that i guessed might be the Dakotas, after taking a look at the route map in the airline magazine.

overcast and rain in Chicago and a delayed flight into Detroit. back home late and a welcome sign of spring: the early frogs were trilling their loud chorus.