In The Sky—It's... A Bunch Of Stuff

We happen to live in a rural area that sees a lot of air traffic. There is a municipal airport a few miles away, and we seem to be along the north and south flight routes for the commercial airliners going to and leaving Portland International Airport.

Which means we get plenty of planes at high and lower altitudes. However, we also have balloonists and ultralight enthusiasts and even some remote controlled planes and drones hobbyists. There's an RC field just up the road.

_{Image source—Glen Anthony Albrethsen, iPhone 6s.}
The hot air balloons don't normally fly right over our house, but this one did.

We've had private and military helicopters of all sizes fly over, as well as private jets. In fact, as I was writing this, a private jet flew over at a good clip heading south.

During the late spring to late summer we even have a biplane that buzzes fields around us. The pilot isn't joyriding—he's a cropduster and has been doing it for at least the 22 years we've been in the area.

Thankfully, nearly all of these flying contraptions are able to stay in the air as they fly by. Every now and then you'll hear of or actually see one of them fall from the sky. There's been at least one small engine aircraft crash as well as one or two of the one man machines, like ultralights, come down.

Otherwise, they fly overhead to whatever destination their pilots and passengers have in store.

We're also along the flight path of migratory birds, mainly geese, so we get to see them heading south for the winter (which will probably start in a month or so) and then come back for summer. They can get quite noisy keeping each other together with hundreds of birds in different V-shape formations.

Are backyard also seems to be a favorite gathering spot for smaller fowl like robins and starlings, which like to eat the strawberries, blueberries and cherries as they come on. Some of these birds actually provide a service with lawn maintenance by eating the larvae or bugs that damage the grass, but for the most part, I'm chasing them off when the garden starts producing.

We get our share of flying bugs, too, from bees to flies and assortment of winged insects. Some I don't mind having around. Others, like fruit flies, I could probably do without.

As we move on into autumn, we'll have the leaves which turn from green to vibrant reds, oranges and browns falling briefly from their perches on the branches to the ground. Thankfully for me that doesn't require a whole lot of work since we don't have trees in your yards, but it will be for plenty of others. That's okay. We've got enough yard work as it is.

In thinking about the leaves that will be falling, it reminds me of other things the wind carries and blows about in other parts of the year, like pollen, and the fluff from cottonwoods and dandelions. Fortunately, I don't have allergies, but I'm among the seemingly lucky few.

That kind of stuff gets me thinking of the possible contaminants that are going into the air by all of the machines flying overhead and the small industrial plants we have, along with whatever is produced by the vehicles on the nearby freeway and local roads.

_{Image source—Glen Anthony Albrethsen, iPhone 6s.}
We don't typically have three jets flying in succession but yesterday afternoon it happened.

We had another bad year for fires, and during a particular stretch of August we had a few days of haze, even though the fires were hundreds of miles away.

There was a building fire between us and the next closest town. I was leaving the grocery store and entering the parkinglot when I realized something was falling from the sky. It was sizable flakes of ash from the fire. It had traveled a couple of miles to land there.

So, you never know what's going to come from the sky, I guess.

That brings me to something we regularly have: clouds. While intermittent during the late spring through early fall, they tend to dominate the skies the rest of the year, along with rain and a general gloom. I don't mind the change in weather and the cooling off, but I'm not looking forward to about five months straight of cloud cover. Maybe we'll have a sunnier winter and spring like we did this last go around.

Because when the clouds are dominating the sky, it's harder to remember something else that's up there and very important to life and well being: the sun.

I probably should also include the airwaves, too—we've got a satellite dish on our roof receiving broadcast transmissions from space. The radio in my car picks up radiowaves. There's electrical lines which for the most part stay overhead.

Now that I think of it, there's a lot going on in the skies where I live. And that's mostly during the day. We've got all the stars we can see at night, along with the moon whenever it passes. We might even get a shooting star, see one of those satellites, or some other celestial event.

Lots going on. I doubt it stops anytime soon. And yet, there always seems to be plenty of clear sky, too.