I approach the shortest grass strip as it leads me to the airfields.

Ambient buzzing propellers and garbled radio chatter glean from the tower.

I smell rotten redolence of gas and grease waft.

The lightest of trainers and speediest of jets pass my single engine propeller.

To distinct cub yellow and the shimmering of airline logos.

Jamming my throttle forward, focus at the end of the runway.

Three hundred feet go by, and I’m no longer tethered to the ground.

Climbing through the sky, wind batters and pushes my plane all directions.

The hazy horizon splitting the sky becomes evident.

Banking left, the Milwaukee skyline is thirty miles out.

Faint and distant lights of traffic cross parallel to my plane.

Slight crosswinds become turbulence and rock my wings.

Darkness filling the sky, my tension crystallizes.

City lights scattered across the ground, I have no ground references.

Airport lights flicker and blink.

Descending through the scattered clouds, my approach begins.

Lining myself with the runway and making the slightest corrections.

My radio and propellor tune themselves out.

Updrafts and downdrafts attempt to take control.

Five hundred feet, runway numbers grow larger and larger.

Fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, ten…