The massive quilt of the American landscape unravelled down below and I watched it for the whole five and half hours. The flight charts pretty much a straight course out over Boston Harbour, down over New York and then west into the vast interior of the United States. At first you're looking down on the suburbs and small towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio in their legoland form, then the space between the clusters of houses and highways starts to widen and you're seeing a patchwork of fields and rivers. These are the farmlands of Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, marked out in perfect rectangles and criss -crossed by the natural disrupters of boundaries that are rivers, the biggest and most identifiable being the Ohio and the Missouri. After this the land becomes more rugged until eventually, with a kind of gradual, steeply rising introduction, the Rocky Mountains appear, and the earth doesn't seem quite so far below anymore because they are huge and snow capped and really quite high. This meant we were over Colorado and as we left the Rockies behind the colour of the land began to change to a reddish brown as we came over the desert mountains of Utah and Nevada. I hoped very much that we would fly over the Grand Canyon but I have to posit three possibilities here:
a) we did and I missed it (very unlikely even for me )
b) we didn't (strange because it must be on or around the flight path)
c) we did and it was on the other side (possible I suppose).
Just as I was thinking I'd had the best five hour view of my life and even missing the Grand Canyon couldn't spoil it, it got better. San Francisco Bay was glittering in the sun and the descent showed off all those impossible city hills lined with multi coloured clapboard houses. I was having a lot of fun.
A few hours later, having explored the waterfront, Pier 39 and Fisherman's Wharf, I really am sitting on a big brass bed in my room in a delightfully quirky, old style boarding house 'hotel'. Much cheaper than the big downtown chains and with much more character. Tomorrow is my free day here and I have booked the Alcatraz day tour which includes a boat trip to the old island prison and and a guided tour of what is now the museum. Thursday and Friday I'm on the Delancey Street Foundation's two day course. Just had to share my amazing day on the plane and reflections thereon. It wasn't lost on me that my appreciation of the landscape of this country came on the day when its government 'shut down' over an argument about its new health insurance legislation. For a few hours we really were above it all. Back on earth and down at the wharf earlier I also noticed how many (many, many) clearly mentally ill and homeless people wander and rant to themselves, oblivious among the tourists, looking all the more pitiful and lost in the sunshine. Part of this city's beauty I think is in its name. Given that the saint it was named for would be most likely to be found living among those very people it's ironic that they're seen as a blot on it. San Francisco is a jewel but like all of our cities it has its casualties. And a big name to live up to.
Fyodor doesn't have much to add on this occasion because like most penniless 19th century Russian writers he never flew across America. I am thinking though that he too would be found among the beggar men and women. Or maybe picketing the tour of Alcatraz? More later in the week.
The Rocky Mountains from 30 000 feet.
Alcatraz Island from Fisherman's Wharf.
