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Here I am again--this time at the controls for now. Here it happens to be the Ituri Forest (second largest rainforest on earth, soon to be the biggest, and not because it is getting bigger!), but it could be the jungles of the Amazon, or Malaysia, and all of it HREF"Endless Broccoli" HREF. It could also be the Great Namib Desert or the Karoo or the Sinai or the Sahara. Or it could be the Himalayas, the Andes, the Rockies, the Alps. Or the great and vast oceans or polar ice caps. I am always above them looking down, and thinking about this ultimate "map" beneath. No merkatur projection here, this is the real thing, writ large!
I always fly in a window seat. I am often content to look down and see what remarkable parts of this big and wonderful world I have been admitted to as a privilege, and how not all of those people down there can come up and similarly look down at their own and other worlds by passing over them. I have been on the other side, as well, as you may read in HREF "Is Anybody Out There Listening: Does Anybody Out There Care?" HREF, a story of my being marooned out in the tundra, and looking up at the only potential contact I could have had with any help anywhere--but they were settling into their third wine with dinner at 33,000 feet in an unreal world, while I was in the uncharacteristic reversed position of being lost in the all too real world of howling wolves and freezing rain.
HREF "Taking Leave" HREF is often the best way to recognize where we are.