Getting High: Aesthetic Flying

                Travelogues bog down in the mundane; griping about security lines and procedures, annoying fellow passengers, and the ever more intense provocations of travelers’ impatience.  But such inane prattle misses the proverbial forest for the trees: the tao of travel, as Paul Theroux calls it.  In other words, why travel at all if we fail to stop, breathe, and consider the journey along the way?

              

  In a world in which we are never out of touch for long, hurtling through the air at 350 miles per hour while above ground at 35,000 feet in what is essentially an aluminum tube can sometimes provide more intense considerations of sprawl, planning, and design than takes place at ground level in our day to day lives.

                Yet as South Floridians used to traveling in the opposite direction from the rest of the country, we sometimes ignore these heavenly encounters with our environment that generations ago would have been thought impossible.  As part of our ruminations to spur your thinking on such issues the next time you travel, consider a few favorite South Florida aerial highlights:

      1.    Should you be treated with a westward landing or an eastward takeoff from Palm Beach International, your views of the mansions and grounds of the estates on Palm Beach Island will be unsurpassed.  Will this be the closest in our lives that we get to the residences of the island, aside from ironing rich people’s shirts, cutting their grass, or mowing their lawns?  For that matter, we, the many lowly urban dwellers who live close to the airport pass by the private planes of the rich and famous every day.  Who has not seen the distinctive “T” Trump jumbo jet, or Vince McMahon’s smaller WWE executive jet? 

      Our own PBI provides perhaps a gentrified vision of a public airport unmatched anywhere in the county: our flights are notably less expensive and more plentiful out of Fort Lauderdale and Miami; when we see upgrades to the PBI landing tower we are no more moved than an updated lounge at Mar-a-Lago.  This time, instead of the high hedges of Trump International Golf Club signaling to the public to keep out, it is the market of high prices, the sea of private jets that signifies PBI is not for the masses, though we may live and work so close.

  

2.       Although not specific to Palm Beach County, who can still fail to marvel at the space shuttle launch pods at Cape Kennedy?  Native travelers to destinations in the north and east of this country will often be treated to an unrivaled view of the world famous space center. 

            In fact, one weekday afternoon flight to Washington D.C., I felt our cruising speed decrease. “Odd,” I thought, for this to happen in perfectly normal weather with no turbulence.  The pilot informed us that we were to witness the launch of a space shuttle.  Up out of their seats came those on the left side of the aisle.  And what a spectacle it was – an unobstructed view of man’s quest to reach the heavens, while viewing it from miles away, thousands of feet above the ground.

            3.   Flights in and out of PBI and Fort Lauderdale provide us with an unmatched opportunity to ponder the nature of the suburban sprawl we live amongst.  I talked to a New Yorker once, who said a friend of his just couldn’t get used the differences between the big city life and South Florida.  “Strip mall heaven,” I replied.

            Indeed, views on the long eastward landing pattern to Fort Lauderdale (ditto for PBI) give us a real-time spectacle of our pod-like suburban existence.  Each community, gated or not, demarcated with its roofs of similarly colored pates, shows the design of south Florida as envisioned for years.  The historical Palm Beaches site has some terrific comparisons of what used to be swamps or fields decades ago now transforming into American style suburbia.  Wellington, after all, used to be the world's largest strawberry patch.

            The point is not to lament or to praise this type of development - we will do so in future posts.  The point

is that an aerial view can bring home the point that this is where we are and how we have developed – there is no going back.  Can we learn lessons of smart development, or will each new sun belt city or metro area, growing as they are, suffer the same destiny of suburban, strip mall-centric development?

      So the next time your blood pressure rises thinking of your delayed arrival time, or cursing the crying baby preventing your slumber, grab a window seat and ponder.