WINDOW SEAT: DRAMATIC & PECULIAR VIEWS

More from this article....

"A reader once asked me about a supposed "tacit agreement" between pilots in which we will not openly discuss UFO sightings. I had to laugh at the notion of there being a tacit agreement among pilots over *anything* let alone UFO sightings. For the record, I have never met a pilot who claims to have seen a UFO sighting. Honestly, the topic is one that almost never comes up, even during those long dark flights across the ocean.

Which isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of spectacular views to behold through the cockpit windows. Some of my personal favorites:


THE DRAMATIC...


The erie, flickering orange glow of the Venezuelan oil fields -- an apocalyptic vista that makes you feel like a B-17 pilot in 1945.

Similar, but more thoroughly depressing, are the thousands of slash-and-burn fires you'll see burning throughout the Amazon. Some of the fire fronts are literally miles long -- walls of red flame chewing through the forests…

Or the frozen, midwinter oblivion of northeastern Canada. I love the jaggedy, end-of-the-world remoteness of Newfoundland, Labrador, and northern Quebec -- this gale-thrashed nether-region of boulders, forests, and frozen black rivers...

Or the majestic, primordial nothingness of Greenland. The routings between the US and Europe often take flights over Greenland. If you've got a window seat and you’re headed this way, do *not* miss the opportunity to steal a peek, even if it means splashing your fast-asleep seatmate with sunshine….”


AND THE PECULIAR…


Sable Island, 200 miles from Halifax, Nova Scotia, is one of the oddest places I've ever seen from aloft. The oceans are full of remote islands, but Sable's precarious isolation makes it especially peculiar. It’s a tiny, ribbony crescent of sand, almost Bahamian in shape and texture, all alone against the relentless North Atlantic. It’s like the fragment of a submerged archipelago -- a miniature island that has lost its friends….”


THE FULL article is here:

http://life.salon.com/2012/01/19/who_needs_ufos/singleton/