Chasing The Sun

After some late afternoon delays, Southwest Airlines flight 1053 finally got airborne from Philadelphia just as the sun started to set. We are finally over seven and a half miles above the earth and have been cruising westward for the past two hours. I am in my coveted (forgive me, but that is unfortunately the right choice of words) Row Eleven Exit Row seat. I am enjoying every bit of the extra legroom. Sure am glad I invested the extra ten bucks for priority boarding. For the first time on recent flights, there is no one in any of the middle seats and there is plenty of elbow room on this Boeing 737-700. The accountants back in the Dallas headquarters aren’t going to be happy with the lack of profits from this flight. Only eighty-three passengers and all are pursuing a wide variety of individual activities as we journey westward at well over 500 knots per hour.







My wife is re-highlighting a recently acquired book. (Mine was in yellow—hers is in pink.) Fortunately, she is very patient with me because I continually interrupt her concentration by trying to get her to look out the window. You see, for well over the past two hours I have been totally enraptured by the setting sun. Every few minutes there is a new dimension or hue in this slow motion panorama that wasn’t there the last time I looked. Except for when I was in Anchorage many years ago, I have never had the opportunity to get more than seemingly momentary glimpses of magnificent sunsets. I wish this plane could go faster so that we could stretch this two and a half hour envelope even further. Unfortunately, a thin fading band of lavender is slowly slipping toward a finale, well short of the distant darkened Rockies.






I am still in awe of the spectacle that I’ve witnessed. The prolonged spectrum and depth of colors was indescribable. Not since I discovered kaleidoscopes many years ago have I’ve had this type of an almost endlessly changing spectacle. My wife has since finished her book and moved on to her ever present Sudoku. The other passengers continue to be predisposed with a menagerie of interests. I wonder why the awesome sunset didn’t noticeably register with the others. I am happy to share and can’t believe it’s just for me.






As I sit and reflect, I think I feel a faint warmth permeating me or at least my mind and heart. It is a treat to view the sun up here this close to heaven with little of earth’s normal pollution to interfere. As I mentioned earlier, I wish I could “kick into afterburner” and chase and reunite with the sun’s magnificence. Someday; perhaps soon. And for certain, forever.