Other passages

Going somewhere

Coming over these mountain passes, I'm thinking about other ways in which we pass these days.  Airports seem to be our primary means of passing from one place to another...a way of using a sky vehicle to guide over mountain tops and river basins to get to somewhere else. 

Going somewhere

Yet there is a kind of antiseptic quality to these passages.  One walks over acres of floorspace, stands in lines waiting to board, sits strapped into chairs, and dismounts onto other acres of floorspace.  Sometimes a glance out the airline's windows gives one a sense of place, of the land being traversed, but in general one passes the time in a book or watching a movie of someone else's adventure.

But the passage, unlike the view from Fremont or another mountain pass, is not exhilarating.  and as a place to pause to contemplate the direction in which one is moving, well, there's not time for that.  It is all about moving...with announcements blaring "do not leave your baggage unattended"...and lines to show the State your identify.

 

So the airport represents less of a passage and more of a kind of portal...a place that shoots you from point A to point B.  It's a kind of journey that only begins when you get off the plane, when you leave the airport by bus or car or train.   It's a shared journey but shared with folks whose destination bears no resemblance to one's own.  It's like being part of a swarm of insects...one which dissolves at a point of arrival and disperses into the new landscape.  

The swarm at DIA, Denver International Airport

 At the same time, these portals have the ability to move us great distances, far beyond the steps we take to hike over a mountain pass.  They can transport us, somewhat lessened of our humanity by having to prove we legally belong to some national governmental entity, to new (for us) worlds or back to old ones.  Trade-offs, I guess, every journey is a trade-off, a road taken, a road not taken.