Cross-country flight.

[via kottke]

My favorite time to travel is at night, although I don’t usually get to do it, and it leaves me wiped out (although plane travel does that to me in general). Specifically I love looking out the window and looking at the glowing networks of streetlights below, spread over the country like a glowing abstract spiderweb. This video captures some of the wonder of that experience.

A friend of mine had huge paintings in her family’s home of such views — deep, dark night, mountains in the background, grid of white dots in the valley below. I loved those paintings; I wish I knew who the artist was.