Michael

One of the pastimes I enjoy when flying is viewing clouds from above. It’s a completely different perspective and consequently has a beauty that is not seen from our typical land based field of view. I believe this is a great analogy that reminds us to view our world (including people) from different perspectives as things previously unseen now become visible.

Last evening on a plane from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles I saw a very special sunset. In fact, I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. Everyone has seen and enjoyed the play of light as the sun sets and illuminates the underside of clouds with the colors of salmon, hot pink, gold, orange, yellow and etc.

The primary color of this sunset on the clouds was salmon. Like every other sunset, the clouds were being illuminated on the underside, but the difference was that I was above the clouds. So, the effect was that the salmon color was coming through the clouds and not being reflected as we typically see. It was extraordinary.

As I looked out across the cloud bank for miles, I could see large, irregular, soft patches of salmon color coming through the clouds. As I viewed this, I was reminded of a mosaic, but this one had depth and three dimensions. The colors were not all the same brightness because of the different thicknesses of the cloud layer.

I enjoyed this nature “show” for over 20 minutes. Eventually the sunset turned darker and the colors became more saturated. And then it was over. For that brief time, I forgot about everything else and just simply enjoyed the moment. When I see events like this, it makes me believe that there is still magic in the world.

Michael