A few select airlines have opened up what they are calling “flights to nowhere”--airplanes that take off and land in the same airport an hour or two later--and they are selling out in minutes.
I can’t get this out of my head.
On the one hand, there’s a little part of me that understands it. Flying in airplanes has always been a reflective space for me. I never paid for wifi, even when it became available. Instead I would give myself permission to get absorbed in a book, or wrestle with a piece of writing without the temptation of email, or handwrite in my journal. Or, once I had little ones, do that most luxurious of things--even while sitting up and cramped--sleep. I’m a window seat person--I love looking out that little oval and studying the clouds or the weird crop patterns or gazing at the necklace of lights at night. I do miss all those things.
The last flight I took in January to DC. Seems like a lifetime ago.
There was a hike nearby my house that I used to detest. It goes straight up a hill--steep and rocky, and exposed. On a bright day, the sun beats down on you relentlessly. My friends would often invite me on it because it’s an efficient workout in nature that you can do in the midst of a busy life. I dubbed it “the transactional hike,” because I found it so antithetical to what I like most about hiking--which is the meandering and the creaking eucalyptus trees and the dancing shade.
During 2020, I’ve probably hauled my ass up that hill nearly 100 times. Mostly alone. Sometimes with a friend at a distance. What used to feel transactional now feels cathartic. I have discovered my rage and I need a place to stomp and sweat it out. What felt punishing last year now feels freeing. I want to get away from my house. I want to get away from my perfect, infuriating kids. I want to get away from my brain and into my body.
And I also realized, when I heard about the “flights to nowhere,” that I crave the view. It’s the closest thing I have to that feeling of flying--of floating about the frey of a busy life in a broken world. I breathe differently up there (when I can breathe…). I think differently. I feel differently.
Claremont Canyon in all its rocky, cathartic terribleness
One of the most liberatory trudges up is to be had at sunset with some contraband wine. Friday night, when we found out RBG passed, two friends and I hiked to the top. We sat on a fallen tree and talked about her fortitude and her training. We played out the political scenarios and named our fear. We surmised that death really does have total control if it could even take down a woman like that before she likely wanted to go. As the sun dropped below the horizon of the Pacific Ocean, we named our admiration, and poured a bit out for the plucky warrior for justice.
No part of me wants to get on one of those flights to nowhere. I crave the perspective, but I detest what the metaphor brings up for me: the relief of changing your consciousness only to land in the same damn place. What men have done for so long, who think they have gotten in touch with the way in which sexism erodes our society, only to keep pulling the same levers and pressing the same buttons in their own daily lives. What, we, White people have done and keep doing--reading all the books and following the right people on Instagram, and then landing in the same damn place. Preserving our wealth. Clinging to our positions of institutional power. Living in the same segregated neighborhoods. Sending our kids to the same schools.
I think part of what I find most inspiring about RBG’s approach to social change was that it was so action-oriented even on a heady bench, it was exacting and unromantic. She wasn’t flying. She was plodding. She wasn’t grandiose. She was granular. I know we need all kinds of leadership to make this country different, but right now, in this moment of such urgency, I find her style--or lack thereof, really--refreshing. Her legacy is speaking to me like this: Keep your feet on the ground. Keep walking very deliberately and strategically, but for God’s sake, don’t fly to nowhere. Don’t fall in love with your own notions. Do the work. Do the hard things. Do them til you die.
Love this / hate this metaphor. So true. So much false white utopia nowhere to let go of.
I needed this tribute to Ruth, and what her legacy is telling you. I was up there on the mountain with you.