xtcian

7/19/03 Columbia County, NY (21

7/19/03 Columbia County, NY (21 days until wedding)

My brother Steve got his pilot's license about 24 years ago when I was 12 or so, and he used to take us up in his single-engine plane around the cornfields of Iowa. That terrain is not especially known for its majestic beauty (even though Grant Wood came awful close); I remember Steve letting me take the controls mid-air and saying "just keep the nuclear power plant to the right of the propeller."

After covering the AYA show in Georgia, Steve borrowed a plane and flew up to the Berkshires, so Tessa and I met him at the Great Barrington airstrip for a quick jaunt in the skies above our farm.

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Needless to say, it was magnificent. The plane was tiny, cramped and a little noisy, but who cares - by the time we got over our place and saw a little black dot called Chopin the Dog running through the fields a thousand feet below, we were in heaven.

Route 23, which is the old Columbia Turnpike from the 18th century, cut a gorgeous swath through the county and on to the Catskills. Words pauper the experience, and pictures only hint at what it's like being up there. After circling our place three times, we decided to take the plane up to 6,000 feet to get over the clouds for a better view of New England in general.

It was a little bumpy, and I was afraid Tessa (whose summer camp friends called her "Ralph" due to her predilection for motion sickness) might hurl, but she was totally fine. We never quite got over cloud layer, but when the view opened up, and the Hudson River appeared, it was miraculous.

Steve said you used to be able to see the World Trade Center towers from up there. The visibility wasn't stellar, but still, you suddenly had a grasp of the physical world as a map. You knew were stuff went, and saw the relationships between road, river and rail. You understood where you fit, an impossibly small creature tip-toeing across dainty lines drawn on the Earth. It's like Douglas Adams' "total perspective vortex," and like Zaphod Beeblebrox, it doesn't feel all that bad.

I hate flying commercial airlines with a two-Xanax and three-bourbon-and-ginger passion, but I'll get up in a single-engine plane with Steve any day of the week.