Notes from 30,000 feet

Takeoff from SMF, 3:55pm, into north wind, destination Burbank; flight path more easterly than usual . . . streets and houses below make patterns like inlaid mosaics, some white, some dark . . . trees cast long shadows on this solstice afternoon . . . land all lumpy, mousy brown, trees look like pebbles that could be brushed away were there a hand large enough . . . snow in the high country . . . and hanging over the wing, a nearly full moon in a pale blue sky . . . river canyons dark slashes . . . passing Yosemite, El Capitan with a cap of snow, Half Dome looks like half a bundt cake dusted with powdered sugar . . . White Mtns visible, seeming to dwarf the Sierra . . . right turn, and we're back over the Central Valley, roads and canals cutting their way south . . . grid of valley towns, straight roads, smooth rectangles, all under control . . . dozens of large plots containing scores of long, silver-roofed buildings . . . poultry? . . . don't know . . . and some odd, crisscrossed plots I've never seen before, even though I fly this route frequently . . . now some badland-looking terrain plopped in the midst of the groomed, tidy landscape . . . the big Central Valley Project canal appears below, fat as a nightcrawler, and as smooth . . . land now corrugated, arid, bleak-looking, some appears to have been flooded . . . where, exactly, is this? . . . Here are the Tehachipis, stark and beautiful as always, dusted with snow, ochre and pink in the long rays of the sun, places that look like William Morris paper . . . a river valley, dry riverbed branched and braided like sinew and muscle . . . over the top of the wing I can see the San Fernando Valley hoving into view . . . another turn and the orange paint on the wings looks lit from within, then another slight turn and it once again looks just ordinary . . . hard right, and the portside wing's angle reminds me of the raptors I saw wheeling in the sky last Sunday . . . Touchdown, Burbank, 4;45 p.m.