As a little kid I’d grab my seat in the plane and plaster my face against the window pausing only occasionally to order a soda or accept the peanuts my parents handed me. Looking out, over the miles and miles of earth I never could grasp how they got all those tiny little squares and the perfect circles of green to show up.
Years later, each time I land in a window seat I find myself doing the same thing. Watching. Only now it’s not so much about the squares and the circles, it’s about where the small car is going, what the family that lives in that tiny white house is having for breakfast, what it’s like to be surrounded by nothing but open space. I’m curious about the people, the life, the rituals.
On a trip to Indiana a few weeks ago – shortly after 90% of the country had been pounded with an absurd amount of snow, I got the pleasure of seeing it from above, seeing the squares and circles coated in the pristine… hoping that the inhabitants were all at home, cozied in front of the fire sipping cocoa and snuggled in.