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...

Darkness rolls upwards from the horizon, like a wave rising up from the ocean. The actual ocean, 41,000 feet below us, is out of sight, hidden by several layers of clouds. In the far distance, out my side window, the end of the wave of black narrows to a vanishing point as it drops around the curve of the earth. Across the cockpit, the Captain reaches up and dims the overhead lights to match the changing light. I do the same with the lighting on my side of the cockpit. And then with no other pressing duties, I lean forward and watch the advancing night...

The full moon, looking like a luminescent china plate, rushes upwards into the fading blue sky.  Twenty minutes ago, unseen behind our tail, the sun dropped over the western edge of the world, the cloud shadows it created below us merging with the gray, murky ocean waters. The air is still, and I lean forward—my hands on the glareshield feeling the slight vibrations of the engines—as I watch the moon put more and more space between itself and the horizon...

The shadows seem to slide across the ramp in quick bursts, like stop-motion animation, as my attention wanders between the dying afternoon outside the cockpit glass and the constant scroll of social media on my phone. In the moments that I stare westward and watch it, more and more of the rough concrete, cooling in the diminishing light, darkens and loses detail and texture as the shadows overtake it. A light breeze blows through the unlatched window to my right, swirling through the flight deck and out the open L1 door behind us, leaving dust motes hanging in the beams of light that are streaming out from a sun that is gradually dropping towards the cloud-shrouded mountains in the distance...

I slide my seat forward towards the cool, blue glow the instruments display—until it hits the stops. The plane calls off 1000 feet, the radar altimeter’s beam pinging off the dark waters of Boston Harbor, unseen in the mist and fog that surrounds us. We are flying an Autoland Approach, and as per company policy, the Captain is “flying,” although with the autopilot doing all the work, his sole jobs are to monitor the displays and take over if the flight computers fail, and to bring the thrust to idle when commanded to by the airplane after it flares over the runway. To his right, the FO is backing him up and making any callouts that the airplane fails to make. I’m the Relief Officer on this flight, and despite being only three feet away from both the Captain and the FO, I have no official duties right now other than being another pair of eyes...

Flying upstream following the undulating curves of the North Platte River westward across the frozen Great Plains of Nebraska, the cloud layer below us gradually thins out and then fades away to nothing. The late afternoon sun that has been slowly creeping overhead in a slow parabolic arc towards tomorrow is now blasting the left side of the cockpit with an intense light and heat that even the darkened layers of the sunshade can’t stop. The Captain is currently on break in the back, and the Relief Officer now occupying his seat—and his role—adjusts the edge of the shade for about the fifth time in as many minutes in an effort to minimize the glare for us both...

A half moon, almost lying on its back, rises from the murkiness of the horizon. Behind it, dragged along by an invisible string, the Oregon coastline materializes from out of the darkness. The view far to the southeast through my front window reveals a smattering of ground lights that breaks up the blackness—which is shifting towards grayish blue the closer to the moon that I look. These lights, clinging to the edge of the land mass we are rapidly approaching, will soon be followed by more and more that keep pulling our attention eastward across the continent towards eventual daylight...

Morning light fills in the eastern skyline, washing out the darkness of the night we’ve been traveling through for the past seven hours, erasing the stars and planets in its path as it climbs upwards from the horizon. The initial hints of pale yellow give way to golds and then reds, and then finally, the hot white light that spills over the edge of the world, chasing the last of the night away just in time for the sun to break the line that separates the seen and unseen world. Counterintuitively, the Relief Officer and I increase the brightness of the displays and instrument backlighting, as the dimmed lighting, set five hours ago by the other crew on board, is overpowered by the sunlight...

We fly south into the night, a tilted Southern Cross sitting low on the horizon ahead of us. In the cool darkness of the cockpit, I adjust the brightness of my primary display screen, causing it to flare slightly and then dim. My map display is already turned down and I focus on it as the point marking the middle of our flight drops off the bottom of the screen. As it disappears behind our virtual tail, I lean back into the sheepskin cover of my seat and roll my shoulders. Across the cockpit the Captain sits quietly, contemplating the darkness that passes us by at eighty-one percent of the speed of sound...

The whisky compass swings back and forth in the light turbulence, but in the brief pockets of smooth air, consistency settles at 11 points to the left of due east. The last few hours of flying have been mostly smooth, as we were able to pick our way through a jumble of confused, high altitude winds. Heading mostly eastward, the sun inscribed an arc in the sky overhead like a ball attached to a string tied to our tail. Just over an hour ago there was a barely perceptible shift in the light as the sun dropped towards the horizon, its rays passing through more and more atmosphere as the physics of a globe started to come into play...

Muffled light, filtered by the hazy air we are flying through, bathes the cockpit in a uniform glow. After hours of chasing the slowly setting sun westward, I feel my skin relax in the dimmed light and I watch as each switch and protrusion on the instrument panel seems to soften, their shadows fading into nothingness. Aided by the light headwinds of summer, the crossing has been relatively quick—something I know we will pay for tomorrow night when we track eastward through the night sky, towards the promise of the sunrise, and home. But for now, as the muted form of the rugged hills of central South Korea slide by below us, that thought is nothing more than a bill that hasn’t yet been sent out for collection...

The sun is barely clear of the horizon, and the air is still cool, but I know it is going to be a hot one. I saw it on the TV in the hotel lobby—while waiting for the van to pick us up in the pre-dawn darkness of summer—where the anchor was gesturing at splashes of red and orange across a map. I also heard it on the AM talk radio station playing quietly in the hotel van as we drove through the still sleeping countryside towards the airport. Once there, the counter agent checked our IDs and then ushered us through the door into operations, where a ramper was busy filling up giant jugs with a mixture of water and ice. “It’s going to be a hot one,” he said by way of greeting...

The last splashes of red and orange have faded from the horizon, as we run westward from the night at 32,000 feet. The sky has slowly desaturated over the past 20 minutes—from what had been the bright blue above the post-sunset light show, now has completed its steady fade towards black. Below us now, patches of light stretch out into the distance, each one connected by an arterial network of roads that weaves its way through the invisible Pennsylvania hills. Fifty miles ahead of us, emerging from the distant fuzz where dark sky meets darker earth, and cutting across the random pattern of lights, the Ohio River serpentines its way southward, its banks lined with the harsh orange lights of coal plants,  factories, and other signs of industry...

We are now almost two hours late, and of course it is go home day. The hot Florida sun is starting to slide downward towards the horizon, and I wipe my sweating palms on the shop rag that the mechanic has draped over the nose wheels. I look over at him as he crouches uncomfortably underneath the nose of the plane. “One more time?” I ask. He nods...

We start our takeoff run into the setting sun, its bright orange glare diffused across the old, scarred, and grit-blasted windshield of the Cessna 172, all but blinding us. Even with the protection of the darkened lenses of my sunglasses, I squint my eyes almost all the way shut and use the side window to judge our position on the runway. My student in the left seat—a relatively new pilot building flight time—is doing a good job of keeping our nosewheel on the centerline despite the sun’s challenge. I glance at the instrument panel, where the arm on the airspeed indicator is sluggishly spinning to the right, chasing the speed of the second hand on the clock that sits nearby, while out of the corner of my eye, I see the 3000 feet of remaining runway sign slide by...

Silver streaks of moonlight reflect on the waters of the James River below us, as the gear thumps out into the night air. In the darkness off the left wing, ghost ships in the Navy Reserve Fleet swing at their anchors, blocky shadows of gray, endlessly pulled by the currents and tides. I move my attention back inside the cockpit and double-check that we are ready to land. We are making position reports on the common traffic frequency because it’s after-hours at Newport News, Virginia and the tower is closed. However, there won’t be many people listening—today is Thanksgiving and most other airlines stopped their schedules in the early afternoon for the holiday, so it’s just us and the empty boats out here right now...

Rain is pounding on the plexiglass of the windshield and beating against the skin of the airplane, sounding like the cascade of a giant waterfall. I look out the window of the Seminole at the two blades of the left engine’s propeller as they carve circles through the water-filled air, a blur of black against the gray world. The rain is streaming across the side window, single droplets, like slugs, leaving horizontal trails on the plastic that evaporate into the slipstream within fractions of a second...

The bus’s headlights sweep across my face, briefly illuminating the interior of the cockpit in an orange glow. Behind me, on the other side of the open cockpit door, the flight attendant is busy in the galley putting together the last few things she’ll need to welcome aboard our 50 passengers to Akron, Ohio. Outside, the wind is gusting across the Washington DC ramp, driving raindrops through the darkness, splattering them against the glass of the cockpit windows. I glance up from the maintenance logbook that I am studying in time to see the first of our passengers make a dash from the shelter of the bus and splash across 20 feet of wet ramp, towards the welcoming warmth and light of our main cabin door. Seconds later I feel the plane shudder slightly as they start up the airstairs...

I stand underneath the tail and point my flashlight upwards, highlighting the dark shape of the rudder and elevator. Big raindrops, blown horizontally by a strong north wind, briefly appear in the flashlight’s beam and then disappear back into the darkness, where I can hear them wetly splatter against the side of the fuselage above me. All around me, water droplets drip from the rest of the plane’s surfaces where the rain has collected, but before they can reach the ground, these too are blown away in the wind gusts that rip across the ramp. Beyond the outline of the tail, water vapor—maybe clouds or maybe fog—streams through in illuminated pools cast by the lights mounted on the terminal roof...

We cross over the coastline of Vietnam, seven miles above Da Nang, with a broken layer of clouds ahead of us that are mostly obscuring the dark waters of the South China Sea. It’s just before three in the morning below us, and the minimal ground lighting paints scattered shapes of dull orange light in the clouds. The last of the lightning filled thunderstorms we’ve been weaving our way through since taking off from Thailand several hours ago have now fallen almost one hundred miles back into the night behind our tail, and the half-moon that greeted us as we broke through the layer on our initial climb out has finally sunk behind the western horizon, leaving a sky absent of light beyond a dim wash of stars...