I don’t know what to write – I don’t know what to feel. I’ve been shoved to this moment by a force more powerful than anything I’ve ever encountered. It seems time was jerked from me like a tablecloth yanked from a table. It’s been so sudden that I don’t believe I’ve even begun to deal with the emotions. What I’m about to do still feels as unreal to me as the landscape far beneath me.

Yet as I leave, as I finally get under way, a calm has settled in. The most difficult part is over. I cannot turn back now even if I wanted to. With that finality is an almost perverse security. Now that I can no longer cling, I no longer reach. Of course this is just the eye in the first of many emotional storms I’ll face. I suppose part of it is simply the beauty of flying – it’s difficult to be upset up here.