I COULD HAVE PICKED UP the special oil that Puff’s engine likes when I flew to Sebring with Dan the other day, but didn’t think of it.  So my task today was to fly the 60 miles down there alone with her, and for a change, way up at altitude.  At one time in my life “at altitude” meant 38,000 feet with a cruise climb to 42,000, the sky all dark above, helmet visor down against the sun and the sound of oxygen hissing in my mask.

With Puff a few hours ago, “at altitude” was clear up to 1,500 feet on a hot hazy Florida afternoon, she liking the view from so high but not much caring for the turbulent up- and down-drafts, for she was traveling and not seeking lift.  Soon as I turned on the camera to show you the power of warm air rising, everything smoothed out.  If you want to see 30 seconds of smooth air, I have it here.

It was on the way back from Sebring, over the town of Frostproof, that I saw something I hadn’t noticed in decades, something which struck my biplane passengers at once: “The farm, the town, they’re _toys!_”

Perhaps we were at the perfect altitude, but Frostproof was laid out on kitchen-table Earth below us, all in miniature and astonishing detail.  The grand homes, the trailer parks, the churches, even little cars rolling on streets you’d swear were real.

All the drama, I thought, in every one of those houses below, in the bank and the church, there were dramas in progress, folks joyful and frightened, fatigued and inspired.  Some crying this moment, some whistling.  All the actors in place on their stage, each one living the script, speaking it perfectly without thinking what words could come next.

For someone a thousand feet higher, there was even a little SeaRey flying above, with a tiny pilot looking down from his windy open cockpit, a-wonder at so many scenes being played all at once.  Their scenes, my scenes, everyone with a part that needs be played.

Flying will do that, from time to time, blind-side you with its literal perspective that pushes you into knowing none of it’s real.  Beyond each one of those chess-piece players, a different self hovers who lives beyond the set and the script and the drama, who cares only for the expressing of love — will my actor take the chance onstage to do that in this play, this lifetime?

Then Frostproof faded in the haze behind us, it was back to airspeed and altitude and fuel remaining but not quite.  The feeling, the connection with those lives, flickered in and out after the town disappeared.  I couldn’t shake it out of my mind: in every single one of those toy houses, drama in progress, lessons being learned.

North of Lake Wales, Puff tugged me down, she wanted to land on the water and be still for a minute after being banged about in the sky.  Which we did, choosing a lake as round and silver as a dollar in the sun.  I reached my hand to the water gone silver to blue, cooler thicker wetter an arms-length from the cockpit than the air had been, a thousand feet up.

Then we were off again and before long home: sixty miles in sixty minutes.  A flight in which Puff was passed on the road below not only automobiles, but by an 18-wheeler hauling an open trailer of oranges.

When she miffed at that, I reminded her that the truck likely did not take time to cool off in any lake it wished.