The Best Room Ever

I had never seen clouds like these or from this perspective. I was in a 60-passenger jet slightly above the cloud version of the Rocky Mountains. They were gargantuan, and the plane was a broad-tailed hummingbird flitting about them. As with the Rockies, words fail me.

Although the cumulonimbus clouds were generally below us, huge grey-white walls jutted up in front of us so high that our miniscule plane seemed to be only at the foot of a new mountain. The pilot had announced we were traveling over 400 miles per hour, yet it felt as though we merely hovered about the crags of cottony cliffs, the scale was so great.

Slowly, our hummingbird floated about, but then something must have startled it, for as we neared the towering Cliffs of Oblivion, we darted in quickly with impressive dexterity and speed. Once inside the pillowy wall, all bearings drained quickly away. Were we moving or not? When the plane banked to the left, it was difficult to tell if we stopped banking or if we simply kept rolling over. I gripped my seat and noticed the lady across the aisle simultaneously did the same. We both laughed a short, quiet, nervous laugh.

We would burst into inner cloud chambers—small rooms in which we could see cloud walls, ceiling, and floor before piercing the opposite wall. One chamber, though, was simply massive. The room itself was bigger than I even imagined clouds could be. The plane emerged from one wall to find itself floating in this cavern of white, surrounded at a distance by cloud. This room was also different in that a shaft of sun had forced its way in from the upper left, reflecting off the crystal clouds, emphasizing stalactite- and stalagmite-like formations. I was momentarily surprised that the sun was not below us, shining up. We hovered about in the room for a full minute or two, and I thought that this is the safest place there is. No one could find you here. How exotic this is, I thought. Of all the people who have ever lived on the face of the earth, how many have experienced this? Call me Icarus.

It reminded me of the astronauts a little. How many humans have been in space? Twelve actually walked on the moon. Of the earth’s population throughout history, what decimal point of a percentage is that? Isn’t that why people want to meet astronauts? To hear something new and novel and profound? What a responsibility that must be for them. I’ve heard that Neil Armstrong is quiet, introspective, and private, and that people resent him for that—for not being a more public figure after his historic and unique experience. But, really, how would you describe it? I can’t even capture an experience in the Rockies or in these clouds. One astronaut, when asked what the moon was like, said, “It was really great.”

Greater than this cavern, I thought.

Then we fell. Hard.

I don’t know how far the first drop was, but when the wings slammed down on a mass of air, it rattled our bones. After a few seconds, the pilot reminded us to keep our seatbelts on—that this turbulence would probably last until Chicago. Gone was the paved skyway, and now onto the country, washboard, potholed road.

I guess the turbulence shook the novelty out of me. All I wanted to do was land. I began to feel very overheated and began to sweat. The gray-whiteness all around me was making me sick. We could be doing summersaults, I thought, and then became convinced of the very thing. Suddenly, raindrops began appearing on my window, and watching their path across the Plexiglas reminded me of the raindrops on a car window, and my comportment was restored. Seconds later, we slipped out of the cloud, seemingly inches above the runway, and rolled onto the land.

I’m glad that’s over, I thought. But then I thought back to the crystal cavern of cloud. It was really great.