It was 100 degrees in Denver that day. A sprint to that airport is always an adventure of clogged highways,
a l-o-o-o-o-n-g drive down Pena Boulevard (point of curiosity: why is locating your airport 12 miles off the freeway a good idea?), topping off the tank at the one and only gas station within 20 miles, an often protracted wait for the rental car shuttle, and the blast of human activity that greets you when you walk through the doors of the terminal.
Denver Airport - Stock Shot
My traveling companions had been prudent enough to get TSA PreCheck and Clear, the two ways you can expedite the security process. I used to have TSA PreCheck, but fell off this particular wagon somewhere along the way, and never spent the relatively small amount of time and money it takes to reinstate it. Looking at the sweltering mass of humanity in the cavernous chamber devoted to Denver International Airport security, I wondered about this choice.
Advancing toward the longest line in the world, cattle-like, the people around me were getting anxious, the way people do in huge crowds. The flow of humanity inched forward, merging like so many rivers, trying to array itself into the single line that would switchback, at least six times, before we achieved the privilege of handing our photo IDs to a security person. You could feel the angst rising all around.
How long would this take, I wondered. An hour? Two? That did not seem out of the realm of possibility. My flight left in 90 minutes.
There being no other alternative, I joined the river. I also thought about how I might view the coming interlude.
I could monitor every little measly piece of progress I made. I could watch my feet take baby steps. I could compete with the people around me, claiming a one-body advantage at times by being aggressive. This would probably involve not making eye contact with those around me, with whom I would be sharing the next little bit of our lives. Because one generally does not make eye contact when one is being a jerk.
Or, I could do something different. I could think creatively about these lives. Wonder who these people were and where they were going. Who here is happy, sad, scared, lost, exhausted, content? Who is flying to the biggest presentation of their career? A first meeting with a new grand baby? A wedding? A funeral? A trip of a lifetime?
When I had exhausted my imagination about my fellow travelers, I thought about some other things. The building was relatively cool; an oasis on the sweltering Colorado Plateau. I had comfortable shoes, clean water to drink, an engrossing book to read as I inched forward. I was coming off a glorious week in the Rockies, with cherished college friends I have known for almost 50 years.
I contemplated the purpose of this enterprise around me. All these people, this huge space, the harried staff, the technology, the processes that smart people have been tinkering with since 2001--- when global terrorism changed everything about the way we travel—all of this was designed to keep me safe. A hassle, yes. But is it really not worth the alternative? Suddenly, I was smiling at the people around me; letting those with closer departure times cut in front of me.
And once I was through? I got to go climb into a metal machine that would rise into the air and deliver me thousands of miles in a matter of hours. It’s a miracle, really.
When I was very small, I asked my dad, a United Airlines pilot for 40 years, how this was possible. “It’s so big and heavy,” I said. “How does it get up in the air? Why doesn’t it fall?” He explained lift, weight, thrust and drag to me; how differential pressure under and over a wing made flight possible.
“But,” he allowed, once the physics lesson was over, “it is kind of a miracle, isn’t it?”
The TSA delay in Denver clocked in at just over 50 minutes. I made my flight, joined my friends, and streaked across the western sky, over mountains and valleys of an extraordinary country, on a beautiful summer afternoon.
When we landed in San Francisco, we left the metal machine, traversed the cool, beautiful, modern Harvey Milk
Terminal (sorry Denver, but SFO has got it going on over you), reclaimed our belongings, and headed home.
I believe in every life; every day --- maybe even most moments --- there is darkness and light. It's a matter of choosing how to look and what to see. Lord knows, I don’t always succeed at this. More often, I fail. But it is more or less my North Star; the personal code by which I try to live: Find the Light.
Find it.
And sometimes, in one of those miraculous moments when to your surprise, you realize that you are equal to the task, spread it.
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