It seems strange to say, but my work interferes with fun things, like flying. I miss being able to take evening rambles, low and slow over the countryside at the end of the day, as the sun slowly slants down and disappears behind the northwest horizon. As the sky turns from blue into shades of pink, the green earth below takes on a richer and more vibrant hue. The pictures framed in the windshield all make a fitting and rewarding end for a long summer's day.

For two years now, my work shift has commenced in the evening. It is my job to carry a load of boxes to the city, a task that bears only slight similarity to an evening flight in my own plane. Two days after the fourth of July, I thought that I would be able to fully capture the best of both worlds with an earlier- than- normal departure from Elmira on a splendid summer evening. I was able to depart while the sun was high enough to be shades of yellow rather than red.

The first thing I noticed after takeoff was the "devil's washboard" section of the Chemung river as it turns to pass south of Harris Hill. The steep sides of the valley were scalloped when the river cut its present course, and the light of the low sun laid right across the washboard. Not a significant landmark at the height of day, the ridges now stood in bold contrasts of sun and shadow. Turning on course to the southeast, I admired the shadows of the hills spilling into valleys and of hedge rows stretched across hayfields. Just as I was achieving a sense of contentment, I was again reminded why flying at work just isn't the same as flying for fun.

As I climbed through 3000 feet, I started to lose a sense of contact with the scenery. At my favorite altitude, things like fresh hay or tassled corn can actually be smelled, but as I climbed higher, the landscape and its long shadows gradually lost definition and flattened out just like a photograph. A nine thousand foot cruising altitude is not very high for "real" airplanes, but it is high enough that you are a part of the sky rather than the landscape.

The view from "my office" is seldom disappointing though, and this evening was no exception. As I climbed, I had thought the air to be quite clear, and it surprised me to note that the air became even clearer just before I leveled off. Despite its 50 mile visibility, the air I had climbed through had contained enough moisture that it was milky when compared to the air I was now cruising in. The horizon line was at my altitude, on top of this summer haze, rather than its more traditional location at the boundary of earth and sky. It seemed I was skimming along on a calm sea, and an area of flat clouds ahead were islands that laid upon it.

By the time that I reached the clouds, they were filled with the red light of sunset. They seemed to shimmer as I approached, their water droplets trying to make a rainbow but only producing subtle differentiations of red. I had never noticed this sort of thing before, but cloudscapes are capable of great variety. I decided that I could be content with this sort of scenery until the next evening flight in my own plane.

The sun set, and the darkness of evening grew upon me as I rumbled my way east. The trip soon seemed just like another easy ride on a clear night, with the lights of Newark Airport visible from eastern Pennsylvania. As I flew along watching summer colors fade into shades of gray in the failing light, I tried to imagine a January night, where it would have been pitch dark for four hours already, freezing cold, and maybe snowing too.

I landed on Newark's runway 11 and turned for the long southbound taxi. I looked out the right window, to the west, and noted that the sky still had a glimmer of brightness above a pink horizon. The call of duty had cheated me out of a stroll among the long shadows, but had provided pleasures of its own as a consolation. Most of all though, it was a flight to keep in my memory box, a bit of captured light to brighten the dark flights of winter.