The Strange Allure of a Flight to Nowhere (and Other Places We ’re Desperate to Go)

A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have It’s Not Just You delivered to your inbox every Sunday. OH, THE PLACES WE’RE DESPERATE TO GO Lately, in that gray-blue hour before a winter sunrise, I’ve taken to staying in bed and flying to Morocco. It’s the place I’ve been that’s the least like Brooklyn, where I have spent most of this pandemic. Trying to remember the way the air feels on your skin in an unfamiliar climate is the smallest of escapes. Maybe it’s a necessary one, now that everything within reach feels so unrelentingly familiar. I like to relive a flight over the Sahara. From a plane, the backlit dunes look like an optical illusion, gentle sand waves rippling out to the horizon’s edge. But once you are down there, on earth, you realize that those waves are massive, four, eight or 10 stories high. Driving over dunes is another kind of flying. You have to muster enough speed so you don’t get stuck at the crest, but not too much that the car flips over on the other side. It’s the slimmest of margins, but an experienced driver can take you into the air for a few wild seconds where you can see the top of the next dune and look down at the trough below. The angle on the way down is so steep, you brace yourself on the seat in front of you as if you’re doing a push-up. When you reach the bottom, with a thud and rattle, it feels like a tr...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Evergreen It's Not Just You Source Type: news