Somewhere in my early 20s, a marriage ruined, kicked out of my apartment and a self-concept that I knew was destroying me, I strapped on a backpack, got a walking stick, bought a pair of very good hiking boots and headed...off. I literally gave away everything I couldn't fit in the pack, walked out the door and to the nearest highway, stuck out my thumb and I was off.
I look back on my hitchhiking days fondly. I ended up in the Canadian subarctic for a while, traveled the high seas, all those romantic things you read about or see in movies. Friends have told me I should write my memoirs of that time. I did write The Weight based on those travels and it has elements of just about everything that happened during those years of travel (email me if you'd like to read it. It was nominated for The Pushcart Prize, something I'm proud of in a way).
Fortunately, this post isn't about my wanderings, per se, it's about the time it took me to drive, sail, walk and hitchhike from point to point during that time. I visited places where (I'm sure) no white man ever walked and I doubt have been visited since.
That's the great thing about being lost, you know.
But now it seems you can get anywhere if you give yourself enough time (how metaphysical, that). The map above is "The First Global Accessibility Map" and documents the time needed to travel by land or water from any one point to the nearest city of 50,000 people or more. Pale yellow indicates less than an hour's travel, dark brown means ten days.
As remote as I thought I was at times, it seems only 10% of the world is now considered remote in the sense that it takes two or more days to get there from a city of 50k people.
How sad.
But then again, remoteness, aloneness, was never based on physical time, was it?
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