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Staring out towards the horizon

Sir Francis Drake. Sailor. Circumnavigator. Pirate.

In June of 1579, an English ship landed on the coast of a remote place that would eventually be known as California. Sir Francis Drake on the run from the Spanish, had the audacity to sail north from the Central American trade routes and not south like everyone had expected. He and his crew explored the coast, found a good spot, and careened the ship and repaired the hull.

For three weeks, Elizabethan era sailors walked along the sand of California beaches, thousands of miles from the nearest European, and no one had any idea where they were, or where they were going next.

For all their connection to what was then called civilization, they might as well have been on Mars.

California, or what would become California, had the same moderate climate that it has today, had plenty of food and most importantly, it was very sparsely populated. At least by comparison to what would come later.

I’ve often wondered about what that was like, to be thousands of miles away from anything remotely close to civilization and all the compromises comes with it.

I’ve also wondered if any of the crew found the temptation to stay as attractive I would have found it. I wonder if "the good Captain" left anyone behind or if during those three weeks ashore if anyone went out for firewood one morning and just didn’t return,

Along with a firearm or two, a hatchet, a knife or two and a couple pairs of shoes.

I was thinking about that just the other day as I swam through the flotsam of what had been a bad meeting at work. Lots of yelling and finger pointing and as I stood at the podium with my powerpoints illuminating the wall behind me I found myself saying in my inner dialog:

“If I could leave, I mean really leave, I mean leave as in “Alpha Centauri or Bust” leave, I’d be so totally gone right about now”.

Its one thing to think about going to Alaska or New Guinea, Gilf Kibir or some island the South Indian Ocean, yes there are parts of those places that are remote, but you just know every sunrise or sunset you can look up and see a satellite brightly go into the terminator and there’s a jet contrail over most parts of the sky anywhere in the world. Signs of civilization are in every corner of the modern globe. My guess is that we live in a time where there is no place you can go and be as remote as those Elizabethan sailors with Drake were.

But the laws of physics and the expense of space travel aside, what is it that keeps us here in civilization? Why not just keep moving like our ancestors did? Until about three generations ago, that was what people did; they kept moving along. There’s a certain value in moving beyond the potential improvement in economic condition, there’s a sort of lifestyle “car wash” that occurs with immigration that allows you to re-invent yourself at the next stop.

I’ve traveled past most of the immigrant trails in Utah, Nevada and California (yes, 150 years later, you can still see the wagon trails in the dirt, the graves, the inscriptions on rocks that mark the passage of all those people) and I always find myself asking what it was that made them walk, I mean literally walk over that territory.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that it was about something more than the money.

To me, it was also the ability to “get away” as much as what they were going to that mattered to them. It was the ability to start over, to leave it all behind that mattered. They weren’t just going “to something”, it was that they were leaving something behind.

On purpose.

In the end, that was the whole idea. That’s why they didn’t stop in Nebraska, Wyoming or Idaho or other places that were just as nice as what they would find in California and Oregon. Those places were just too close to all that they hoped to leave behind. Too easy to be found, too close for someone to bother going to find you. 300 years after Drake even for the people of the world of the “49’ers”, California and Oregon might still as well have been Mars, and frankly that was probably the real attraction.

Today, no matter where you go, no matter how far, there’s a McDonalds just around the corner, A TGIFridays, Macaroni Grill in the same part of the neighborhood as the Applebee’s, a Target right across from the Home Depot, the Lowes on the other side of the street and the busiest store in town is always Wal Mart.

The most uncomfortable feeling in the world is to be traveling on business, to be tired and worn out walking through a Wal Mart at 2:00 am for aspirin and for just a fleeting moment, you forget what city you are in because all the stores are the same, they same layout and floor plan, the same goods on the shelf.

And overhead, cameras watch your every step. There’s a camera watching you and someone watching the camera every step of the way. Forget innocent till proven guilty, in the modern mercantile business, you are a criminal until you cross the threshold of the store, after that you are a disgruntled customer.

Everytime you go through the register, a little bit of data about you is gathered but it’s like the old thing about natives not wanting their picture taken because they felt you would be stealing a part of their soul. For me, everytime I buy something and the person behind the counter tells me to use my “bonus card”, I feel like a part of me besides me money has been taken from me. Sure, its only data but it still bothers me. Right now they just want to know what I’m buying to help them predict what to put on sale and when but some day, it’s going to be more than that. Someday, someone is going to want that data about certain individuals to prove a point in court and then it wont be funny anymore. Soon, our purchases of cough medicine, aspirin, hemmroidal creams or contraception will all become fodder for the legal world.

Cameras at red lights, traffic cameras at bridges and freeways being fitted with license tracking software. GPS in your car so the insurance companies can track your mileage and travel habits. Bank records come with with your every use of your ATM.

All of that data, all about you and its all out there for just waiting for the subpoena and some day the subpoenas will come. Good people standing for office or even applying for jobs will be called to explain why they purchased various things at various times from various stored or why they were in parts of town they shouldn’t be in or why they constantly broke traffic laws. That’s how civilization is made. The tall non-compliant grass is mowed down by the dual motorized blade of “were only looking out for your best interests” and “its for the good of the children”.

Frankly, it’s all starting to make me feel just a bit uncomfortable. It’s starting to make me look out at the horizon and think about what it means to leave. It’s also made me long for a time when you really could get away, just by walking towards where the sun comes up or goes down until you run out of land. And then you make a boat, and keep going.

If you could get away today, would you go? I mean really get away, not take an RV up the Alaska Highway and stay at KOA’s all the way to the arctic circle; I mean go “away”.

There are days when I think that it’s a good thing that we don’t have the technology to leave the Earth and the solar system as easy as we would like, because if we had anything like that, the Earth would probably be a ghost town in a week. Not because the Earth is such a bad place mind you, but because all of human civilization has at its core a way of making you want to leave it just as soon as you can.

Maybe that’s what makes us human, the desire to leave all the other humans behind.

I envy the men of the Golden Hinde and I admire all they accomplished, but I’ve always wondered what it was that made them come back to Elizabethan England after seeing a place like Wild California. Because I think I would have stayed right there on the beach and waved as Captain Drake, the crew of the Golden Hinde went over the horizon taking that little piece of civilization with it.

Posted @ October 21, 2007 12:49 AM | Current Affairs

Posted by: A reader at October 21, 2007 10:21 AM

Posted by: RPD at October 22, 2007 07:18 AM

Posted by: Igotbupkis at November 4, 2007 12:37 AM