Destination Clearwater: Clearwater Beach at 500 Feet

I am not the pilot, but it feels pretty good to be up in the air all the same.

I’m not a fan of big planes. I don’t trust them, not one little bit. It doesn’t make sense that a plane that can’t glide should stay up in the air, and, when I’m in a jet-powered plane, I keep waiting for it to remember the laws of physics and drop from the sky like the metal death trap it is.

Now, a small plane? That’s a different story entirely. I’ll hop into a little prop plane any day. You can trust little planes; short of the wing falling off, it’s pretty hard not to glide back down to earth if you lose power.

A long time ago, someone I wanted desperately to impress invited me for a ride in a small plane. In a moment that changed my future, I said yes, and I fell in love with small planes. As the plane passed over Clearwater and headed out over the Gulf of Mexico, the air calmed and I fell in love with the freedom of flight. The world I knew became an aquarium, and I was peering down at it over the edge. I loved seeing the water from 500 feet. The first time I saw Clearwater from the air, my entire youth parsed into my line of sight.

At 500 feet, even Ave looks like a doll house. The pulse and thrum of the boats, bars and beach smooth into an almost-tableau, a to-scale model of coconut oil, seafood and salt.

The Gulf is a painting and the beach is a photograph. There’s movement below me, but I can’t see it. North Clearwater beach? It’s a wilderness, with sandy paths winding through trees and shrubs, leading to the backside of the beach, a bayou it never dawned on me existed.

As anyone on Clearwater beach knows, banner planes make multiple passes over the beach, and the tip of Carlouel marks the northern point of the route. That’s where the pilot would bank the cloth-covered green metal plane and point its uncovered nose back south.

From 500 feet the water is a mixture of colors: sea grass is a muddy blue and the sand bottom turns the water into aquamarine gold with shades of white.

Manatees are blobs of gray, while sharks – yes, Clearwater has them – are sleek bullets, seen far less frequently than Shark Week would have you imagine. Above the dolphin but at eye level with the plane, magnificent frigate birds warily eye the faithful Piper Cub. After a second or two they get sucked backwards, gliding in reverse behind the plane. I realize now that we had out-flown them, but that first time I thought they were getting tossed on the winds aloft.

The sky is endlessly blue and I am part of it, floating on thick Gulf air, letting the sun work its way through the tiny Piper. Puffs of clouds pass below and alongside me; above me is clear, sharp and cerulean.

I look down at my world, my city, my beach. Up here, everyone’s problems are minuscule, including my own. It’s a perspective adjustment of the first magnitude.

Above me, the heavens. Below me, paradise.