happy valley...

From 36,000 feet... at 532 mph, Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Newfoundland looks like a crusty layer of blinding white with barely discernable scratch marks …that I imagine to be roadways. No manner of squinting can bring into focus anything resembling life or populace. But the moving-map video shows our trajectory, and Air France flight 8984 is flying right above Happy Valley.

Writers boast Happy Valley as: “The Big Land, a vast, friendly place with tremendous promise and opportunity, A Bright Light in Canada's North, A strong, progressive community with a frontier spirit, A gateway to the North.”

What a difference 36,000 feet can make in ones perspective!

Once again, I feel my own perspective being jostled … no… slammed actually… from one extreme to another, as I re-enter the Western Hemisphere from Benin. Actually, Benin is just barely inside the Eastern Hemisphere… but worlds apart from where I will land, over 1,400 miles south of Happy Valley.

(From aerospaceweb.org)
Question: “Is it true that a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere at too steep an angle will burn up, or is it just an old myth?”

Answer: “This behavior is no myth. Any object re-entering the atmosphere of Earth or that of another world must do so within a very small range of angles in order to reach the surface successfully. The upper and lower limits on this re-entry region are determined by a combination of three factors: the trajectory of the object, its rate of deceleration, and aerodynamic heating. “

I have transitioned into and out of West Africa many, many times over the past 14 years…practicing different trajectories, trying to ease-in to the next place, attempting various mental exercises to avoid burning up. I can’t seem to get the combination quite right. It always burns.

Perhaps it is supposed to.

“To do for yourself the best that you have in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed.” (Frederick Buechner The Sacred Journey)