Most of these shots were taken from a cruising altitude of 30,000 to 40,000 feet in a commercial jet, through thick plexiglas and small windows, while overflying Africa. Whether the vector is a Boeing 747, an Airbus 380 or 340, or an Advance Iota 2 paraglider, when airborne, one – as Saint-Exupéry said it so well – only sees well with the heart. It’s not about the canned, re-heated food. It’s not about bad movies on small screens. It’s not about frustrating entertainment remotes, nor a seat’s pitch or the lack thereof. It shouldn’t be about security checkpoints and radiation. It cannot be about weather delays and impatient queues. It's not about ego, or pride, or skill. Flying, whatever the machine, the altitude and the speed, is about poetry. It’s about the beauty all around, and the power within. It’s about dreams come reality, and ambition well used. It’s about defying gravity by borrowing a bird’s gracefulness and Da Vinci’s cunning vision. It’s about looking at the world we live in from a privileged perspective, and smiling, and loving it. It’s about being able to take a moment to clear one’s mind while moving just below the speed of sound, or think as fast as the neurons will fire while controlling a frontal collapse right after take off with the hill swinging back at you. Written during a flight over the Sahara: <i>"From the vertical of our position to a hazy horizon, sand reigns, eternal and yet ever-changing, a static ocean of pure heat constantly reshaped by the winds. It’s now late enough that shadows are serious and each dune is revealed as if an all powerful hand had applied eyeliner to the face of the Earth. Mesmerizing shapes and patterns become apparent from the sky and while the poor soul stranded down below could hardly see beyond the next sand dune and would easily get lost forever, an aerial view explains the highly complex yet logical organization of the desert. A fact emerges in my mind: this desert, just like oceans, is alive. It breathes, it moves, it crawls around."</i> More thoughts about flying and the view of the world <a href= "https://www.vincentmounier.com/blog2/aerial-thoughts-lost-in-view/" title="Lost in the view">here</a>.
