I've always been an aisle seat gal. Primarily because I like to stretch my legs beyond the tiny hovel of hobbit-space you receive on the average airplane, but there's also a paranoid, self-preservation element to it: when the inevitable emergency evacuation goes down, I want to be able to bolt to the nearest exit (which might be behind you) without having to crawl over grandma and grandpa. But you don't always get what you want, and on our final, three-hour flight from Fiji to Auckland, I found myself trapped between the window and - you guessed it - a pair of senior citizens. After a 7 hour layover in Dante's tenth circle of hell (LAX), complete with an incessant, ear-splitting alarm that none of the highly-motivated airport employees seemed to know how to shut off, and 10 hours in a metal tube trying to sleep in various positions not healthy for a 5'9 human frame, and then 3 more hours of waiting in the Nadi, Fiji airport, which might as well be underwater it's so humid (said the girl from Alabama), these old folks didn't really seem all that bad. But I'm still deeply committed to the superior qualities of the aisle seat.
Lizzy was sitting pretty in an aisle seat three rows back, knitting a really cool pair of socks, because she's my best friend and she's a 64-year-old librarian stuck in a hot 24-year-old's body. The flight was unremarkable until the pilot announced our descent into Auckland, which concerned me, as all I could see beneath us and before us was dark, flat water. Just as I was preparing to rip out my seat cushion floatation device and do a power leap over the grandparents, a bulge of dark green, mountainous island came into view. It was tiny, etched with rocky cliffs and mostly clear of roads and other signs of human life. Beyond it stretched a bay with.... water in it.
As a writer, I've got a thing with water. I hate writing about bodies of water. You're entering the most cliched territory in existence. Does it sparkle? Glitter? Oh wait, don't tell me, it reminds you of jewels, doesn't it? Blue and green yet full of a rainbow of colors, it's totally inspiring and breathtaking and beautiful and I want to never write about it ever again. See above, about not always getting what you want.
This bay was filled with bright, celadon (yeah, go look that one up) water: an opaque, cloudy expanse ringed with foaming white beaches. The thin line of pale sand was immediately followed by a hilly greenery. The topography of New Zealand is much what you would expect to fly over when entering the country known for Middle Earth: a sea of rich, lush forest, dotted with patches of brighter green that appear to be massive ferns, like green paper stars pushed into a pile on a carpet of moss. The rolling land is cut with snaking rivers, their color fading from the strange neon of the bay to a duskier green-brown as it thins out of view into canyons and crevices.
I was suddenly a child, my nose and hands against the glass of a window the size of my face. Grinning, I kept turning in my seat to try to get Lizzy's attention. I finally abandoned social etiquette.
"Lizzy!" I whisper-shouted. "Are you SEEING THIS?!"
Lizzy, and all the people in the three rows between us, peered out the window, and smiled. Lizzy nodded at me, a silent squeal of excitement in her eyes.
So, all I'm saying is that the aisle is clearly a much more desirable seat. But, thank God, you can't always get what you want.
