What do you love most about travel? Is it the perspective you get from experiencing different cultures? Sampling exotic and delicious foreign cuisines? Perhaps the change of scenery is enough for you.

I say yes to all of the above and more, but for me there’s one part of the experience that holds a special spot in my heart. There’s nothing that guarantees a full measure of the sense of awe like getting on an airplane. Yep, you heard me right. I’m that one-in-a-million person who actually loves to fly.

Watching these massive machines slowly pirouette on the tarmac is like witnessing a ballet of behemoths. Together with their tiny attendants scurrying around to service their needs, they perform a dance of details that culminate in a miracle.

Nothing jumpstarts my sense of wonder like standing there looking out the high windows of the gate at this gigantic metal tube that somehow is going to go up in the air with a whole bunch of people and all of their stuff, only to deposit us on a distant part of the planet.

For me, physics concepts aren’t always easy to grok. The idea that somehow those big fans inside the tin cans under the what-seem-to-be-rather-small-and-flimsy wings can somehow generate enough wind to lift the entire contraption and all of it’s contents far into the air and keep it up for a dozen or more hours at a time is simply mind-boggling.

Yet somehow it works. We buy our tickets, we pack our bags, we go. Sure, we suffer some indignities, and more than occasionally have our patience tested, (good for our character, I’m told?), and explore the limits of our endurance, but at the end of all that we arrive somewhere else in a span of mere hours that would have taken days, weeks, or even months to arrive at in days of yore. A modern miracle, indeed.

An adventure to the airport is a feast of rare pleasures. People watching, for instance. There are few better places to observe, appreciate, and encounter the wide variety of our planet’s humanity than an international terminal. Forget worrying about how the “other half lives”, at the airport you get to rub shoulders with the entire human family.

Appreciation of architecture is also integral to the airport experience. The sheer scale of the buildings, be they Modern, (lookin’ at you SFO), or Brutalist, (nothin’ beats Terminal One at Charles de Gaulle), and how they function as containers and conveyors of humanity is always fascinating.

Artists find fertile ground for large-scale commissions in the terminals of today, the best of which elevates our time spent passing through. While some may be puzzling and some simply ambient, one sometimes stumbles upon that rare piece that provokes a thought.

And the food! We tend to cook at home, so the chance to sample takeout-style cuisine as one finds in the terminals is a novelty. Onboard fare offers perspective into how far the concept of “food” can be warped until one’s appetite is lost. The croissant served with morning coffee assured me that they would only improve as we settle in to France.

Another indulgence I allow myself on long flights is a full immersion into the in-flight-entertainment-system. In other words, I let myself binge-watch movies, often ones I’ve heard of but never seen. This time, to my great please and surprise, I finally got around to taking the time to see the coming-of-age ‘cult classic’ Napoleon Dynamite.

I had heard it was a “teen” movie, but what I didn’t expect was a meaningful message about the power of dance plus a really quirky window into life-as-a-teen in the rural American West much as I experienced it growing up in Colorado in the 70s and 80s. Sometimes cringey, often hilarious, this low-budget flick deserves its place in the pantheon of American classics.

Waking up your sense of wonder is a sure-fire method of bringing your inner child out to play. Next time you have a big trip planned, remember to let the kid inside you have a window seat, and enjoy the flight!

Much love till next Monday!

M+

Mark Metz
Director of the Dance First Association
Publisher of Conscious Dancer Magazine