雅思课外读物-- The moments that made me love flying

今天分享的雅思阅读素材名字叫做“让你爱上飞行的瞬间”。是的，你没有看错，今天这里分享的就是一篇很有情怀的文章。千万别觉得雅思备考是件超级boring的事情，其实看完这篇文章你会发现，雅思备考也可以很浪漫呢！跟我一起，浪起来！

As adults, we often forget the magic of flying. But what it brings to our lives, our perspectives and our outlooks is undeniably the stuff of dreams.

(From BBC, 20 October 2015)

One hectic(忙乱的) morning, early in my marriage, I was driving my father-in-law to the airport. While navigating(航行) the snarling(咆哮的) highway traffic, my mind looped(回环;纠结) through to-do lists, calculating(盘算;计算)how long it would take to drop him off, say goodbye and make it cross-town to the office. Then a jet glided silently over the road like a giant heron(鹭), about to touch down at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.

"It's magic,” my father-in-law said, interrupting my restless thoughts. I looked at him, confused.

Here was a doctor who lectured at colleges and had visited more than 100 countries. He understood better than I the Bernoulli principle(伯努利原则) that keeps planes in the air; how the miracle of flight is actually no miracle at all but a simple physics equation(方程式;等式). It definitely wasn’t magic.

But thinking back now, I realize he was at least partially right. While flying might not be magic, it’s certainly magical. (飞行虽然也许称不上魔幻，却肯定称得上神奇。)What it brings to our lives, our perspectives and our outlooks is undeniably the stuff of dreams. (飞行给我们的生活、视角和观感带来的无疑似梦境一样的东西。)

But too often, we I forget.

I read a tweet a few months ago that struck a little too close to home.(几个月前我读到一条推特，真的说到点子上了。)

“You know you’re grown-up,” it said, “when you no longer want a window seat.”

And too often in recent years, I've found myself sweet-talking gate agents to land a coveted(觊觎，想要)aisle seat on the exit row, forgetting the wonders travelling at near the speed of sound. But occasionally, when the wi-fi’s out or my laptop battery is depleted(用完，枯竭), I remember to look.

One night sticks out to me. I was heading home from California and connecting in Texas after a challenging work trip. Delay piled up on delay as storms marched across the region. When we finally took off, hours late, it was pushing midnight. The crew dimmed the cabin lights and most of my fellow passengers were asleep in minutes (or at least closing their eyes and wishing they were).

I was about to follow suit(紧随其后，效仿) when a flash of light caught my attention. The thunderstorm that had snarled air traffic that night still had some life. Our pilot had routed us 100 miles to the north of the weather system, providing bleacher seats(露天座位)for the performance.

Clouds sparkled as they shot silent bolts of lightning to the ground. They glowed like lanterns, popping with colours in a cosmic light show. I stared into the darkness and noticed the flight attendant had kneeled next to my bulkhead seat to watch the show.

For the next half-hour we were riveted(铆钉，被钉住，醉心), not saying a word as we sailed through the night. How many hundreds of thousands of miles had she flown? I didn't ask. But she could still appreciate the wondrous moment – and on that night, so could I.

I’m invariably(总是)rewarded when I remember to look. The world seems to make more sense from up high. Seeing the great expanse of the Earth divided into neat patterns – fields checker boarding the landscape and roads racing to the horizon – brings symmetry(对称)to the messiness of everyday life.

I've leaned past snoozing seatmates to marvel at snow-covered mountain peaks gliding past the window, and been hypnotized(使催眠，着迷) by a glowing Los Angeles night, the undulating(连绵的，起伏的) topography(表面，地形) sparkling like a star-studded cape. Then there's the unexpected glory of a sunrise that arrives hours too early when you fly overseas, the majestic rays illuminating(照亮)the horizon of another continent. (当你飞行在海上，还有那日出明辉，提前数小时就不期而至，喷薄的光线照亮了远处另一个大陆的水平线。)This moment of discovery unfolds every dawn for tens of thousands of passengers, but few, I would venture, ever stop to think about it.