In Transit Flying over the Andes

    Being in transition is being a traveler. You have one suitcase with clothes and an extra pair of walking shoes in the cargo hold. You have a carry on bag in the overhead with computer stuff, headphones, extra pens and paper, schedules, an umbrella, toothbrush, personal items. Your wallet and passport are in your pants left front pocket for safety. You hate to carry items you don’t need because odds and ends make your trek heavier and less simple. Leaving Uruguay, en route to Costa Rica, our plane is thirty thousand feet up. We fly west out of Uruguay, then up the coast of Chili with the Pacific in view, then cut back towards the Andes for a stop in Peru. There is no such thing as a flight,these days, that goes “straight as the crow flies.”  Transit time is thinking time, sleeping time, re-charging time. Uruguay is in my rear view mirror and Costa Rica is dead ahead. All I have left of Uruguay is what went on between my left and right ears and what I got down on paper or on my camera. Lingering on the past, while barreling into the future, is behavior I don’t want to be guilty of. I don’t ever want old places to spoil new places. From the air, oddly enough, I don’t see any dotted lines that mark borders between countries. I guess we make borders up because we need them.