Recently, I got to take a short trip on a plane – I love to fly! I enjoy the busyness of airports and the numerous types of people that line up everywhere. I wonder where they are going and why they are traveling. I’m always interested in seeing the seemingly endless destinations listed at each gate as I float along the moving sidewalks until I find my departure gate. To me, it is always a grand adventure. 

After I board the plane and settle into my seat, it’s time for my favorite part—takeoff. I enjoy the rumble of the aircraft beneath me as it picks up speed to go fast enough to lift itself off the ground. As the plane’s pace increases, I am pushed back into my seat. Then, the indescribable feeling as the plane leaves the ground and I feel myself floating above the earth. Once we are in the air, I am always amazed as I watch the changing landscape below shrink and then disappear from view. 

Whenever I leave the ground in an airplane and begin to sail above the earth, my mind always goes back to the late 1400s near Florence, Italy. I picture a man sitting at the lake’s edge with a journal in his lap. In his hand is a quill pen, and beside him is a small glass jar filled with handmade ink propped on a nearby fallen log. He is intently watching a small flock of birds land gracefully upon the lake. Once they have landed, he watches as they bob up and down in the water, occasionally dipping their heads below it for food. As they eat, the man turns to some of the previous pages of his journal and carefully examines the writing and illustrations he has previously recorded. Deep in thought, he looks back to the birds as they suddenly lift themselves from the water and take to the air, flying seemingly effortlessly. He watches them momentarily, then hastily writes in backward script, then adds a few simple sketches in the margin. 

The man I imagine at the water’s edge is Leonardo da Vinci, who spent much of his life studying the flight of birds and inventing machines that he knew could fly. However, his ideas were before his time, so no materials existed to build these machines. As Da Vinci sat and watched these birds, he discovered what is known today as wind shear. With this discovery, he determined how birds take energy from wind velocity to sustain flight. With all of his observations, Da Vinci wrote over 35,000 words and more than 500 sketches about flight. He used these to author his book, The Codex on the Flight of Birds.

And that is why I always think of Leonardo da Vinci when I float effortlessly through the air in a plane. He understood the details of the flight, yet he never got to fly. As I glide high above the ground, I think about how wonderful it would be if he could join me for just one flight. Then, he could see all he had discovered in action, and he would finally know what it felt like to be one of the countless birds he watched and wrote about day after day as they lifted themselves above the world and soared high above him through the skies.

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