Jackie liked high places

Oh air travel. How I love that moment when the engines start and I snuggle down into a noisy envelope of aeroplane for a little rest, work on lap, no intention of doing it, sleep then daydreaming then reading mystery novel. And when it is landing and I can see all those hills and windy rivers and craggy ravines and speckles of sheep and tracks of cows and stubbly vegetation, and lonely remnant eucalypts, widowed and left standing exposed in the emptiness, and last night, strange graph-like shadows up and down like some ECG, being thrown off the wind-break trees, and latent ecologist in me thinks 'mmm, shadows, you could do some kind of age structure analysis from photos of their shadows' but then I realise this would only work for these very strange paper thin strips of trees which sit exposed with a road on one side and the vast dry paddock behind them, and only then for the ones which happen to face the right way so that the sun as it sets warms their fronts and their backs cast these jagged shadows. And then, closer, closer and the rough jolt as wheels hit, always so ecxhilerating, like some kind of aeronautical orgasm - kabang, we have arrived.