Contrails

Straight across the cloudless blue sky we see the unwavering linearity of a jetliner's contrails, moving north to south from horizon to horizon. The plane is so high up that its shape is barely visible, and we can't tell from down here if it has two, three, or four engines. At that height, higher than the earth's highest peak, the contrails are visible as a single narrow white band leaving the plane. The band widens the farther away the plane moves: it widens and breaks up, like smoke and yet unlike smoke. Now there are gaps in the hitherto unbroken band of white, and the puffy bits begin spreading farther apart, torn by the winds high up in the clear sky. The white of the contrails become vague and feathery, yet the signs of the plane's passage through the sky remain for a while, as if determined to mark the course it has taken.

In less than a minute the plane has disappeared into the southern sky. Where did it come from? Certainly not San Francisco International, just a bare ten miles from where we are — it was already five miles up when we first saw it. Perhaps it came from Canada, or the Far East, heading for Los Angeles.

On a clear day like this, at the height the plane was flying, a window-seat passenger would be able to look out and see most of the San Francisco Bay Area and possibly as as far south as Carmel and Monterey. What a view that must be! What a picture to capture for Mom on Mother's Day.