Flickering Lights

I associate flickering lights with campfires.

I remember camping with my dad when I was a kid. We would make s’mores after roasting marshmallows over the campfire. Sometimes, I would stare at the movement of the flames, entranced.

Imagine my surprise when I was flying over San Antonio on Friday night before our airplane landed. As I looked down at the tiny house lights, I noticed they were flickering.

It makes sense that one or two lights might be flickering, due to an inconsistent power supply. But that’s not what I saw. Most visible lights on the ground were flickering (but not all)!

What was happening? It took me a minute to realize the cause of what I was seeing.

When you fly over the plains, only a few trees might obstruct your vision. Not so in San Antonio! San Antonio has lots of trees!

It turns out that the trees were partially obstructing my view of the lights. As the plane moved, the view through the leaves of the trees shifted enough to make the lights appear to flicker.

I took a moment to revel in the joy of realizing the cause of what I was seeing. Then, I returned to the book I was reading before the plane landed.