A MINOR OBESSION

It was 1999, I was 22 years old and enthusiastic about just about everything. I found myself in the window seat of a 737 flying over the hills of central Madagascar. It must have been a clear day, and we probably weren't flying too high, because I remember being able to make out the orange footpaths worn up and over and around the various hillsides, connecting the occasional smatterings of houses across the landscape. In my mind I can still see a lone man walking with a stick near the top of one of the rounded, bare hills and I remember wondering what his life must be like, and what he might be thinking as he looked over the valleys below.

Surely I couldn't really have seen an individual walking alone from that height, but the mind works in mysterious ways sometimes.

I thought of the people in one village who might be wondering about their friends and relatives in a little village at the other end of one of those orange paths -- a day's walk for them, but just a few valleys away from my perspective. It was as if I was staring down at a vibrantly laid out map. In the days before Google Earth you can imagine what a rare privilige that would have seemed. To this day, I never find myself more reflective and at peace than when I'm staring out at the Earth moving slowly by, thousands of feet below.

I have only the pictures stored in my mind from those days in Madagascar -- and the country has changed so much in the past 15 years that I couldn't capture them now even if I went back today.

Between the deforestation, urbanization, and other economic and environmental pressures, those landscapes are gone forever. Time marches on, and you can't step in the same river twice.

But I've never lost that wonder at the visions one gets from the window of an airplane at 34000ft. In recent years, as I've had the great fortune to travel a lot in my work, I've always tried to fly during the day, I request a window seat despite my long legs, and I keep a camera close by.

It's a pleasure to be able to share some of these sights with you.

So those are my thoughts, I'd love to hear from you...