Travelers follow lines. They may be the shortest route from one point to another or long, looping curves that fold back on themselves and follow the whims of landscapes and ideas. But we are always moving, always following lines. We make tracks, find paths, navigate shipping lanes, and fly great circle routes. It’s the inescapable, four-dimensional nature of journeying from one place and time to another. Viewed after the fact, from the perspective of the journey’s end, the lines we create may be mundane or fascinating, even beautiful in both form and function.
Another wonderful feature of lines is that they often meet one another. They cross, they join and split and rejoin in elaborate networks. Travelers know this aspect of lines very well, in fact it can be one of the most compelling reasons to travel in the first place. As we move, what will our line encounter? How will we react to our meetings and intersections and how will they alter our future course? Here’s a small example: what is the real nature of whale watching? What’s really happening is that all our lives we have been following our lines while the whales followed theirs. Then, one beautiful day, our lines cross and create an experience we will never forget.
Today the line of our voyage down the Pacific coast of South America intersected some of the most famous and beautiful lines on Earth, the geoglyphs of Nazca. We drove up from Puerto San Juan, through the bare rocky plains and sere hills, following the dark line of the highway through the Peruvian coastal desert. On arriving in the small town of Nazca we went straight to the little airstrip or visited other local sites of interest including a museum of Nazca and Paracas culture and an archeological site of Nazca wells. Sooner or later it was time for the highlight of the day, the flight over the incredible images of animals and archetypical journeys. In the little planes everyone had a window seat and the pilots banked their aircraft steeply to one side and then the other over each huge figure. We were all busy every second of the flight, taking photos or simply marveling at the strange beauty of the place. In this way we carved new lines above those that been so carefully incised into the plain centuries before, three-dimensional flight paths that are all our own.
We’re moving on now, extending our lifelines and stitching the thread of our journey down this wild desert coast. It’s a long arc already, an elegant chain strung with beautiful days, leading us inexorably into further adventures.
