Air travel and airports have fascinated me most of life and I fell in love with the whole idea of flying off into the wild blue yonder long before I took my first flight. When I was a kid, my dad would sometimes take us to O’Hare to walk around and see the planes. I was fascinated by the thought of getting on a plane and a few hours later being someplace else.
I loved walking the corridors and imaging where all the people were going. The people dressed in business suits were obviously traveling to important meetings where the fate of world commerce would be decided (it was only later I realized that the most important thing decided in some meetings was what kind of donuts to have). The families were traveling to exotic locations to see grandma and grandpa. The teenagers were traveling to meet their friends. I created stories about everyone I saw and loved imagining interesting and exciting lives for all of the folks that could afford to travel by air.
Fast forward about 10 years and I took my very first flight from St. Louis to Memphis and I finally felt that magickal feeling that comes from taking off and slipping the surly bonds of earth to ride upon the clouds. Despite my best efforts to be sophisticated and worldly because after all I was a junior in college, inside I was a little kid excited about her first time on a plane. I’d heard about what it was like to look down on the earth from 30,000 feet, but nothing prepared me for how incredible it was to be above the clouds and to look down and see the checkerboard fields laid out below you.
The Air Force called me right out of college and I want to work at Scott Air Force Base as a civilian auditor and planes became a part of my everyday life as I got to see planes, planes, and more planes every day at work. We had everything from huge cargo planes to fighter jets grace our runway and I’d often spend my lunch hour watching the planes come and go.
I transferred to Kadena Air Base after a year and a half at Scott and the flight over almost killed my love of flying. Imagine flying for two days with a husband and four month old. Then imagine getting stuck in Anchorage, Alaska for two days with no winter clothes and a sick infant. That was the hellish beginning of my trip to Okinawa and my first exposure to the darker side of flying: delays, lost luggage, and really cranky flight attendants.The thing about being stationed on a small island in the East China Sea is that if you want to go anywhere, you have to fly and you get to fly in some pretty interesting aircraft. I got to fly in net cargo seats in C-130s and in the very top of C-5’s where you’re actually seated backwards. I loved those flights as they fed my sense of adventure. I also got to fly in a small luxury Lear jet that normally ferried generals. If I wasn’t flying in cool planes, I was out on the flight line looking at them. I got to see the avionics in an AWACS plane and see the inside of a fighter.
I hung up my traveling wings for a few years when we returned to the US, but then in 2000 we took the family to Disney and the magick started when we got to the Indianapolis Airport and the kids realized we really were going to Disney. It was that trip that I discovered it wasn’t only the planes that could be pretty interesting, but the Airports as well. The Cleveland Airport has giant paper airplanes gracing their terminal and we had fun seeing what different ones we could spot.Since that trip, I’ve found myself in lots of airports and I always try to look at them as interesting places in their own right versus just places I’m passing through and I’ve discovered the beauty and grace that some airports exhibit. The United terminal at O’Hare has long corridors filled with lighted globes that add sparkle and dazzle to the trip.
Heathrow is one of the grandaddies of them all when it comes to airports: it is huge, it is confusing, and it has the best shopping. I was fortunate enough to have a layover at Heathrow once and I spent a couple of hours wandering the corridors shopping the world. Burberry’s and Harrod’s offered traditional British shopping, Bally offered goods from Switzerland, and the resturants offered cuisine to suit even the most discerning palete. There was sushi, sandwiches, and traditional British fare.
The Atlanta Airport is an art museum in its own right. I ended up stuck at the airport for a six hour layover and I took the time to explore all the concourses and I found some amazing artwork. There were delicate glassworks whose undulating shapes seemed alive, there were stone sculptures mimiking traditional Afrikaan American art, and traditional folk art from the south.As blissful as traveling the world is, there’s nothing quite so blissful as getting on a plane knowing that you’re flying to the most blissful location of all: home and family.
Cairn by Cairn 