The Dark Lake
N44°38.68′ W86°17.11′
0840 ZULU
The view to the south is divided into thirds—a gradient of light to dark to light, filling the void beyond the cockpit glass. In the distance beyond our right wing tip, the orange lights of Chicago glare harshly in the darkness of an early winter morning, marking rows and rows of buildings and roadways spreading outwards across the invisible Illinois countryside. Moving to the left the picture fades to a deep black, with a scattering of stars spinning in the sky above an even darker Lake Michigan as we head east. We are mid-lake. To the south east, the sky lightens as a crescent moon—chased by a rising Venus—slides upwards across the dome of the night, casting a grayish glow over the solid overcast that masks Michigan’s side of the lake and beyond.
We’re chasing a winter storm, although physics says we aren’t going to catch it—the trailing bands of snow are almost 1000 miles ahead of us, drifting out towards the sea over the frozen sand of New England’s beaches. This is the second time in as many trips that a major storm threatened Boston in the days prior to my scheduled arrival. Last time, a high-pressure system pushed the storm—born of the Great Lakes—to the north, leaving nothing more than a few scattered flurries when we touched down. The single sign of this storm that we’ve seen so far has been the faint whitish tinge of the snow-covered midwestern landscape only barely visible in starlight as it passed by seven miles beneath our wings.
I lean outward in my seat and stare down at the black hole that is Lake Michigan. On its western shore, the water is a rippling ebony form, darker than the sky above it, at once capturing, reflecting and then refracting the lights of Chicago. An airplane’s single blinking red position light glides below us, moving in the opposite direction, constantly getting lost and found against the bright backdrop of urban lights. Mid lake, the waters are darker than the sky above, pulling down deep any light that wanders across is surface.
We go feet dry just south of Muskegon, with the lights of Grand Rapids glowing through the cloud deck in front of us. Beyond, stretching out into the far distance, orange spots of light punctuate the gray cloud layer below, where towns and cities sit, invisible save for their projected glow. The Captain is back from his break now, having replaced the Relief Officer in the left seat a few hundred miles ago. He sips his coffee in the warm confines of the cockpit silently engaged in his own thoughts as Michigan rolls by—whole counties disappearing beneath our nose every few minutes as we press on eastward.
Thirty minutes later, we are hugging the southern shore of Lake Ontario and passing into Canadian airspace. The solid undercast has given way to a broken layer, leaving us a clear view of Toronto—ablaze in light, sitting moodily in the pre-dawn darkness at the edge of the lake. The moon has moved higher, heading towards its eventual date with the horizon behind us, still followed by the bright glow of Venus. I’d had faint hopes that I’d make it to Boston before the sun rose, leaving me some darkness for my hotel room nap, but as we approach Rochester, a faint bluish glow forms to the east, dashing those hopes.
Near the end of an overnight flight, time passes on in the slow drag of the early morning hours. They are measured not so much in minutes or seconds, but in the distance to go number rolling downward on the flight computer and by the steady lifting of the curtain of night from the eastern horizon. My eyes, after almost 10 hours of dry airplane air, feel gritty when I blink them as I try to focus on the lights of central New York State peering out between ragged gaps in the clouds below us. After several minutes—or maybe it’s hours—I give up and shift my gaze forward, watching the first hints of blue slide upwards, pushing away the black of night.
