This morning I was working out in the backyard (something I have been doing over the past few months on non-running days), when I noticed high above me a long, thin streak of cloud-like air across the sky. It was, I’m assuming, the result of a jet flying overhead. I hadn’t seen the jet, or perhaps it passed before I got outside, but the streak left irrefutable evidence, to me, of such an aircraft’s passing by.
They say where there’s smoke, there’s fire. So where there’s a long, thin streak of cloud crossing the sky as if a giant knife took a slice out of it, you presume it was caused by a very fast moving airplane.
From my vantage point lying on my sleeping-pad-turned-workout-mat in the backyard, part of this streak crossed behind the giant pecan tree in our backyard. A moment passed. As I looked at the streak, I noticed that–was it?–indeed, it was now further away with respect to the pecan tree.
The streak of air was moving!
I’ve certainly noticed clouds move across the sky, yet I was still surprised. This slice of an airplane’s wake was gradually floating away, presumably to dissipate into nothingness. There was something magical about witnessing this, as if I was being handed some significant insight into the real-time going ons high up in the atmosphere. I felt like I caught the last chapter of a story writ large up in the heavens.
It was simple, yet it was also magnificent.