Mosaic

The aircraft taking us from Hamilton to Wellington is a small one, a 33-seater (I counted) and I exchange seats with my boss to get the window seat. We take off at 7 PM and the sun is still high on the horizon. The plane is flying low so the landscape is still visible. What I see below me is simply breathtaking. A mosaic of green fields which stretch on and on into the horizon, interspersed with pools of water, undulating lines of trees, mounds of little hillocks and scattered all over black and white specks of cows and creams dots of sheep. The clouds have cast a dark shadow which moves as the clouds glide by and then the plane hits a cloud bank. We plough through tufts of soft, cottony, innocent looking clouds, but the plane thinks otherwise because it starts an instant fight and shakes in consternation. But soon the fight is over and we sail clear of the clouds. The landscape below is now bathed in evening sunlight and the grass glows emerald green in the light, trees casting long dark shadows, and the sunlight gleaming off red roofs in tiny hamlets and glinting off windows and lighting up the bodies of little rivulets and ponds.

Then the pilot decided it is time to climb even higher and very soon we are flying over this bank of cumulus, calm and steady and I can’t help thinking that this is how Jonathan Livingston Seagull must have felt when he flew high over the clouds, breaking free of the limits he had hindered himself with, breaking free of accepted convention, daring to live his life and more importantly daring to live his dream. And from up there the cares and troubles of my life seem so insignificant, so puny so as to be totally wiped out. And I realize that if I remain aloft and apart from the drama of my life whose script I have myself written, I can always be in this space of calm and serenity.

And soon we are flying over the Tararuas which is still snow-capped and the windmills over the Manawatu range, until I see the graceful arc of a long river which I discover with joy is our very own Hutt River flowing through Upper Hutt. And there is Stokes Valley right below nestling placidly among hills darkening in the gathering dusk. The road to Wainuomata snaking over the Eastern Hills and the surf gently caressing the sands of the Eastbourne bays. And as the plane turns towards the airport the sun is low over the horizon, almost sinking into the sea, blazing this shimmering, golden path on the water, almost beckoning me to take it. And the land’s end at Happy Valley and the runway comes up to meet us.