Eighteen Hours and Forty Minutes

With every passing hour, the anticipation grew.

Tucked safely inside my passport was a one-way ticket to South America. No return date. No fixed plan. Just a backpack, a camera, and the quiet certainty that life was about to change.

The cabin lights dimmed as we crossed the Atlantic. The flight attendants moved softly through the aisles, handing out blankets and collecting the last of the dinner trays. One by one, the conversations faded, and the aircraft settled into the familiar stillness of a long-haul flight.

I looked out through the small oval window.

Below me lay nothing but darkness. Somewhere far beneath the aircraft was the Atlantic Ocean, invisible in the night. Above, a sky filled with stars. Between the two, thirty-seven thousand feet of empty space.

For a while, I simply sat there and thought. About the journey ahead. About the people I had yet to meet. About the places I had only seen in books and photographs. Somewhere out there were the Andes, Patagonia, the Amazon, and countless roads I had not yet travelled.

Then the aircraft lurched.

A sudden gust of wind rattled the cabin, followed by another. The seatbelt signs illuminated, and nervous glances were exchanged between strangers. The aircraft shuddered as it pushed through a pocket of turbulent air.

Whispers of nervousness filled the cabin. Clutching armrests, the passengers grappled with their own anxieties; The world below disappeared into an endless expanse of black, with only sporadic glimmers of light from distant vessels piercing the darkness.

Yet strangely, I felt calm.

Perhaps it was the darkness outside the window. Perhaps it was the excitement of what lay ahead. It was a truly peaceful feeling. Maybe I felt a little closer to Him, as I always do whenever  I am up here in the clouds.

And for the first time in a long while, that felt like a wonderful thing.

21st March 2023

Flight IB6453 Seat 37A

Somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean