Pacific: The Ocean of the Future. Simon Winchester

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       Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like dolphins through the blue sea-smoke

       Into pale sea—look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet . . .

       arched over to Asia, Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this is the staring unsleeping

       Eye of the earth; and what it watches is not our wars.

      —ROBINSON JEFFERS, FROM “THE EYE,” 1965

      United Airlines Flight 154 leaves Honolulu International Airport just after dawn three times a week, bound ultimately for the city of Hagåtña, the capital of the island republic of Guam. If the northeast trades are blowing at their usual steady twelve knots, the jet will take off to the east, into the low morning sun over Waikiki, and those passengers on the aircraft’s left side will see the wall of skyscraper hotels along the beachfront and be able to glimpse down at Doris Duke’s great seaside mansion, Shangri-La. Once the plane is two miles high above the crater of the dormant Diamond Head volcano, it will begin to make a long and lazy turn to the right.

      If the morning haze is light, passengers on the right side now can sometimes glimpse the bombers and heavy СКАЧАТЬ