FORGET TAKING A NAP.LOOK OUT THE WINDOW— YOU MAY BE SURPRISED BY WHAT YOU SEE.

By Eileen Chase

MOST PASSENGERS fill their flights reading, working, napping and eating chocolate chip cookies. Meanwhile, outside the window, the most beautiful and intriguing planet in the solar system is gliding past. There’s no better view than from above, so take advantage while you can.

FIRST THINGS FIRST: Request a window seat. Also, bring a pocket road atlas, which will help point out landmarks like roads, cities, rivers and national parks. Often, your pilot will describe the flight path, so try to follow along in your atlas. From lava and sinkholes to rivers and quarries, the view from your window is more than meets the eye.

UTAH: Green River

This may look like Mars, but it’s actually southeastern Utah, where the Green River appears to be a lazy stream—until you notice that it has incised a deep canyon into the land. In fact, the canyon is more than 1,000 feet deep. This is the Colorado Plateau, a landmass that has risen and been tilted by tectonic forces. The river, which once lazed across flat lowlands, now zips down a faster, steeper course. It has also eaten through surface sandstone into shale (the darker brown spots), which is easily eroded. The black areas on the top left are shadows of clouds.

ST. LOUIS: Quarry

This quarry, located just west of Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, is truly a multifarious place. This southwest view illustrates the 200-foot-deep limestone quarry, where the stone is mined to produce crushed rock and aggregate. Once the stone is removed, the hole becomes a solid-waste landfill L in what was once a quarry pit. (Fortunately, the rocks contain so little water that groundwater pollution is not a problem.) The refuse in the landfill generates methane gas, which is used to heat greenhouses G , run an asphalt plant A and heat the local high school HS . A baseball diamond, athletic field and tennis courts round out the picture.

SAN FRANCISCO: Salt Beds

In the marshland, at the very south end of San Francisco Bay, companies produce various kinds of salt from seawater. As the salts precipitate, water is drained from one basin to another. Salt is being harvested mechanically in the white bed at the center, and the scraping-up of the salt has revealed the dark clay bottom of the evaporation basin. (Microorganisms account for the colors, especially the reds and yellows.) The inland basins are efficient-looking rectangles, and the elegant-shaped basins close to the sea are determined by streams flowing into the bay.

GRANTS, NEW MEXICO: Lava Flow

En route to the West Coast, you might fly over the town of Grants, N.M. The view is dominated by a flow of basaltic lava; research shows it occurred between 2,600 to 5,000 years ago. Identifying rock types from the air can be difficult, but this kind of lava flow is easily recognized. Notice the flow patterns, the roughness and the dark color. (Not all volcanic rock is dark, however.) The light regions inside the lava are hills that were engulfed, but not covered, by the molten lava. According to the New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources, there have been more than 700 volcanic eruptions in New Mexico in the last five million years, so this is not a rare sight.

DODGE CITY, KANSAS: Plains & Irrigation

The Arkansas River flows from west to east, paralleled by a railroad and highways, while a tidy grid of roads serves the surrounding farms. The circles are the tracks of center pivots for irrigation. The spray arms, which are a quarter of a mile long, tap groundwater in a well and pivot around it. The pivots water corn, which is used to feed livestock in the feedlots, located adjacent to the lagoons (the black spots) that are for wastewater treatment. The green fields are winter wheat, which is planted in fall, grows all winter and is harvested the following summer.

LEESBURG, FLORIDA:Silverlake Sinkhole

Located about 55 miles northwest of Orlando, Leesburg is in Lake County, which is home to an impressive 525 lakes. According to Walter Wood of the Lake County Department of Environmental Services, almost all of these are sinkholes. Florida is underlain by limestone, which is covered by sand and clay. Limestone is susceptible to dissolution by groundwater, which can result in the formation of underground caves and cracks. If the overlying clay is too thin or if too much water is pumped out of the limestone, the clay collapses into the opening below, forming a sinkhole. These often fill with water, forming a lake 40 to 45 feet deep. (Notice there is no stream going into or out of Silver Lake.)