(“That same area of land were it transposed over Manhattan Island would contain 1.6 million people.”)

Years ago I was working at a Trakehner farm in rural Virginia. While on an excursion to pick up a horse from Europe at the (then) quarantine station in Clifton, NJ, I killed some time driving into midtown Manhattan. Sitting at a light on 42nd Street, it occurred to me that more pedestrians had just crossed in front of me than the entire population of Remington, the town in which I lived.

More recently twice a week I drove up Highway 27 through Williston, FL, to do lessons in the little town of Archer. The highway is a four lane through horse country, bordered by four board fences and medium to large farms, gently rolling green pastures dotted with sprawling live oaks festooned with Spanish moss. If you draw a line parallel to the stretch of road that I drove about a mile out to either side for its 12 mile length, you’d probably count a thousand or two residents. That same area of land were it transposed over Manhattan Island would contain 1.6 million people.

I just got back from Montana. (I know you Westerners reading this are smirking. Yes, I’m an unabashed faux-exurban rube. Eleven acres and two head of French Bulldogs make me a farmer/rancher.) Now nobody isn’t bowled over by the spectacular alpine vistas and rushing snowmelt-fed waterfalls of Glacier. But as breathtaking in its own way is the vast nothingness of the surrounding spaces. A few years ago I explored the area west of Flathead Lake towards the Idaho border. This time I was overwhelmed by the land east of Glacier that seems to roll on and on forever. [Not to worry—it won’t get built up anytime soon. It’s semi-arid there. The mistakes of California aren’t apt to be repeated.] But traveling down Highway 89, not seeing another vehicle in the rearview mirror or ahead for half an hour at a time, watching the empty spaces unroll before me, I kept thinking of the characters Larry McMurtry wrote of in Lonesome Dove and how they would have experienced this same land without the security of GPS and a six speed convertible.

And we think we’re adventurous if we switch cell phone providers!