Finding the Muse on Frontier Airlines

The acceleration, faster than my little human body has ever felt, the ache to levitate, the feeling of floating when the wheels finally leave the tarmac, the astonishment that I’m no longer bound to ground, that me – little old me! — can defy gravity, and on a budget too!

Yes, it doesn’t matter that I’m flying Frontier Airlines at this moment because I’m flying.

Twenty minutes later, the restlessness sets in. Frontier planes are particularly skeletal. The seats don’t recline, the view is cafeteria-tray-gray plastic, greasy fingerprints mottle every surface, and the only complimentary snack is a tepid cup of water.

Indeed, once buckled in and cruising, flying Frontier feels a bit like being in a jail. What an uncomfortable realization that I have entered captivity of my own accord, and the only solution to my sentence is patience.

Frontier Airlines charges extra for seat selection, so companions often get stuck on opposite sides of the plane. If you’re lucky, as “B” and I were, you’ll get to sit with your partner and can use each other’s skulls as pillows.

Other sleeping strategies I witnessed were: face sideways on food tray; cheek smashed against front seat plastic; head jammed in window crack; aisle open air nod and sway.

Up in the Air

On our Frontier flight from Ontario, CA to Atlanta, GA, we escaped a cauldron of clouds cooked up by the San Bernardino mountains, and scrawled above the shriveling Salton Sea. Suburban communities lap at the landlocked lake’s toxic banks like cattle herds. Each subdivision has been given its little penance of greenery.

The desert takes over soon after. It reveals itself not as terrain, but as a force that no man-made infrastructure can hold back. In these arid lands, humans gather at any sign of water, starting whole towns around one trickle, slaking their thirst on the mere possibility of wetness.

The desert is both vague and specific. Land forms stand out sharply against an endlessly “empty” backdrop. Off-road lines scritch-scratched in the sand are stark and telling: Here, humans left their mark — coming or fleeing.

From above, the few houses look vulnerable, but at ground-level, air conditioners, fans, fences, and walls probably barb them. If only they could see their little homesteads from the sky: the dry abyss around them, creeping ever closer to their thresholds, swishing into the kitchen to gather at the baseboards.

A blackened volcanic cinder cone erupts into view, like some enormous egg a dragon burst from long ago. Here, too, people have gathered, clinging to the landmark’s stability against such erasure, such shifting landscape.

Somehow, right through the desert’s middle, the Colorado River slithers. It persists, and beside it, so does a checkerboard of farms clamoring at this water that has traveled so far and been suckled by so many along the way. Oh, how strange to fly over the source of the water in my belly!

But the landscape soon begins to change. Frontier Airlines has left its passengers to their own devices to figure out where the hell we are, but these rocky, snow-capped peaks can be nothing other than the Coors beer logo.

From above, the mountains really range – they stampede, they are width and breadth more than height. They are a million moments immortalized. They are a bustling, a stopping, a place where a decision must be made to forge forward or turn back.

Somebody is farting silently and speciously on the plane. We’ve reached the point where boredom begins to overwhelm all excitement, and gassy, watery bodies begin to protest. Thankfully, here comes Oklahoma, yawning grey and flat, yawning, yawning…

Back to Earth

I awaken to the attendants calling for trash, any trash. This will happen five more times before we land, but the plane will still be a junkyard at deboarding.

The captain dings into the intercom that we’re just outside of Atlanta and will be beginning our final descent. All but the heaviest sleepers raise their window slider like Argus Panoptes opening all of his eyes at once.

Below, the terrain is verdant and fragmented. How unexpected to realize that many Americans live amidst forest. And water! After Southern California’s desert dreamscape, it’s startling to see so much water.

From above, it’s clear that Atlanta and its suburbs prioritize baseball, with hundreds of diamonds etched into the acreage. The forest has been cut and trimmed, sliced and diced, but every polygon of trees seems poised to explode into mowed spaces. All that’s needed is for someone to stop watching, for the neighbors to go out of town for the weekend. Perhaps the forest and desert are not so different.

Surprisingly, our Frontier Airlines flight was punctual, even on the Thursday of Memorial Day weekend. It’s unclear if this is the norm, but we were delighted to be at our destination with half the day unwrapped. Little did we know the horror that lay ahead.