Invisibly, Over Our Heads

This is a posting by an individual who spends his days and on the shores of New Hampshire’s largest lake, posting on a blog called Winnipesaukee WeatherCam.I don’t know this person’s name.I don’t know this person’s gender.I found this person only because of Facebook where the link to a recent post carried me to a short entry so poetical in nature it seemed worth quoting here.“Windy moonlit night and desolate-seeming at the lake this time of year,” it begins. “But the air corridors over our heads are busy! We found a real-time flight radar web site to identify those flashing strobe lights among the stars.“In the past hour we have seen several FedEx flights come from Europe to Memphis directly over Sandwich.“On the same route we saw an Atlas Air 747 heading to London/Stansted from Huntsville Alabama.“Pinnacle Airlines went to Portland from Detroit passing over Laconia.“We watched as UAL 242 descended towards the ocean and make a wide turn there for final approach to Boston from San Francisco, following the same path AAL 202 from LAX had taken just minutes earlier.“United went over Alton Bay en route to Istanbul.“But the real prize of the night was watching Singapore Airlines Airbus A-380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world, pass slowly over Rattlesnake Island, making a flashing strobe reflection on the water. The passengers with a portside window seat would have had a nice moonlit view of our lake, with southeastern New Hampshire in the foreground, perhaps just as they began receiving the in-flight dinner…”It could be the evocation of an all-seeing Eye looking down on all our movements.It could be the image of this one small human going ‘outside’ to look up, and coming back to tell us what is there.Anyway it comforted and charmed me, as I hope it might comfort and charm you too, as we all pause a while under our little dome of sky, with the growing season done and the winter coming on.