Notes from an airplane

It's kind of awesome flying over Canada at night - a spectacular darkness. The map on the tv monitor tells me I am somewhere over the Rocky Mountains. It is profoundly black out there. I cannot tell between ground and sky. Past the beacon of our wing's white light is a distant settlement - a haze of yellow glow on an imagined horizon. A moment later and there is melanoid nothing again, periodically interrupted by the pinprick of some faint illuminate.