Drift

The river had risen overnight. By morning it had taken back the sandbar and blurred the place where yesterday we had crossed. He stood at the bank, holding a stick, and watched the current drag leaves, bark, and one pale branch downstream as if the river were erasing or creating its own map.

“A line or a boundary on a map, they are the same thing.”

“I don’t agree,” he said. “Look,” he gestured to the slow-moving river, swollen with the rains, carrying the remnants of storms, or aging, floating tree branches, still leaved, and other buoyant items. The water stayed moving, brown and muddy, transferring and pulling unseen items, causing some to surface occasionally only to be pulled under again. “An actual boundary rooted in terrain.”

“But our map does not use the river.”

“That’s my point,” he said, “why not use the river?”

I thought I knew where this was going, but I decided to play along anyway. He was settling into one of his trains of thought. Easier to go along. I replied, “Maps, they’re human-made, conceptual.” And then I added, “Nature doesn’t always play along.”

That last comment elicited a smile from him.

“The stroke of a pen,” he said and added, “lines, map lines prove that abstract human ideas can create tangible, real-world consequences.”

I was prepared. He often introduced these kinds of discussions. I offered, “Like where and how much taxes we have to pay.”

“Precisely,” he said with a smile, happy I was keeping up. “Mapping and boundary-making, they’re about power.”

“Draw a line and you have power?”

“Absolutely,” he said, pointing the stick he had in his hand at me and then drawing a line in the sand. “The line creates the boundary, forming the inside and the outside.” His stick jabbed each side of the line he had drawn.

“A crisp binary distinction between us and them.”

“No ambiguity. Removes the discomfort of chaos.”

“Ours, a desire for order.”

“Our universe is unpredictable. We attempt to categorise, control and rationalise such unpredictability.” He still tapped his stick between the inside and the outside.

“So not mirrors of nature, after all.”

He provided no comment, so I guess I had burnt the line already. The sun was nice; the water had been cold. I wish the kettle would come to a boil. The metal was blackening. The orange flames licked and flared around its base. 

He continued, “This line, it’s not merely a border.”

“It’s not?”

“Basically, it’s a system of living social practices,” he said as if quoting a recent study. “A border doesn’t just sit there. It teaches people where to stand, who belongs, who doesn’t, and what kind of trouble waits if you cross.”

I was about to make a flippant remark, such as that’s quite a line, but I realised we were moving toward power politics. It was his new thing. He had been reading, or watching, or listening, and I did not need to do any of those things because he was going to tell me anyway. What would it be this time: the Scramble for Africa, the Radcliffe Line? With relief, the kettle steamed, its lid rattled, and I got up to make the tea. Warming tea.

“Latitude and longitude, amazing if you have a blank piece of paper,” he said.

“What, like the colonial mapmakers in Europe, far removed, like the Scramble for Africa, or the Radcliffe Line?” With smugness, I poured the hot water onto the tea leaves. He gave me a surprised look. Chocolate biscuits to celebrate, I think.

“Abstract lines,” he said, accepting the offered biscuit. He took two. “Completely ignored indigenous ways of life. Migration routes cut; rival tribes lumped together...” his voice trailed off.

“A determined nation-state model. For everyone,” I suggested, taking another bite. I love the dark chocolate ones.

“Terra nullius,” he said, crumbs falling from his lips onto his still-wet shorts.

He had been keeping that one and now waited for me to ask the question, but I was determined not to give him the satisfaction. I blew on my tea and took a cautious sip. Too hot. I guessed:

“Null. Not even the spiritual relationship to the land?”

“Not even,” he replied, accepting the answer. He brushed crumbs from his shorts and looked back to the river before adding, almost too quietly, “but necessary.”

Okay, I was not expecting that, and the smile I had hidden behind my raised cup faded. I asked, “Why necessary?”

“We’ll always seek to map sovereignty onto new frontiers.”

He always does this to me. A slow introduction, succeeded by an acceleration into the unknown. Okay, I would try to stay the course. We’ve moved on to technology. Our school history lessons would not help here. At least my shorts were drying.

Another bite, and between crunches, he managed, “anchored virtuality.”

What was this now? Okay, technology. Perhaps sovereign control over the hardware managing the data flows? I needed another biscuit, more chocolate. A lecture was coming. My mind raced. I know this. Actually, I did not. So, I asked the obvious question, “Where does the power of border control sit now?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it,” he said, standing, crumbs scattering, “more tea?”

I held up my cup.

“On an individual level,” he started, pausing to watch the boiling water pour smoothly into the teapot. Once he confirmed it was safely contained, he proceeded, “We draw borders around ourselves now. Not with fences. With taste, fear, habit, and whatever the algorithms learn to feed back to us. After a while, the fence looks like reality.”

I was back with him now. I said, “Meaning we’ve moved from physical neighbourhoods defining who we interact with, to what? Boundaries shared by ideologies, tastes, or conspiracies?”

“Our boundaries no longer share a common baseline of facts,” he said, handing over my filled cup. “Terra nullius.”

I should have known he would slip the phrase in again. I waited, unsure where he was going with this. Oh yes, he had it planned; a lecture was on the way. We did not see each other much outside the classroom. Sport was not his thing, but our weekend outdoor trips gave him time to share and talk about what interested him. I did not mind. His learnings, his foibles, were usually interesting. Not things I commonly thought about. I sipped my tea and looked out over the swollen river. It came:

“The sky,” he said.

“The sky,” I repeated, lying back, the tea mug warm on my stomach, observing the clouds, their forms, and seeing if I could create a picture, or a form, out of one.

“The sky,” he said, also lying back to stare skyward. “How do you divide up space by drawing hard geographic borders?”

He had me now, I must admit. Had not thought about it. I have, of course, seen all the satellites. Who could miss those in the changed night sky? I decided on silence. First come, first served appeared to be the answer. I noticed my shorts had dried.

“It’s a registration system,” he advised, “radio frequency and international treaties.” He subsequently added, in case I had not realised, “satellites require specific paths.”

“Private companies or sovereign states?” I considered it a sharp question.

“National governments vet the projects. Ensure it complies with international rules.”

“Okay,” I said, “so, like the colonial days, arbitrary rules and boundaries apply until they don’t.” Pleased with myself, I added, “Then we go to war.”

“There’s the potential,”

Here I was able to use his phrase. “Terra Nullius, except it’s bandwidth. Once the bandwidth is taken up, what happens next? I thought of something else, so added, “and what of all the space junk?”

The fire crackled and spat before the logs crumbled and glowed.

“The current arrangements hamper emerging space-faring nations,” he replied.

“So,” I said, “the old geopolitical strategy. Old European powers rushing in to claim invisible resources, and today the superpowers.”

“Precisely,” he said and added, “Idols of the theatre.”

“What?” I asked, looking at him.

“Bacon. Frances Bacon. We studied him last year. Remember? Inherited, unexamined ways of seeing. You know.”

I mean, I kind of recognised the name. I pressed on, “Again they’re ignoring existing populations, cultures, and spiritual connections to the land.”

“Exactly. Not rubber, gold, diamonds, ivory; rather, whoever controls the orbital paths controls the data flow. The new wealth.”

I was with him now. “I see the parallels,” I said. “Treaties, occupation by use, old claims dressed in new language. It’s the same habit, isn’t it? Whoever controls the orbital paths controls what can pass through them.” I looked over and noticed he was smiling.

“Same frontier mentality,” he says.

“Control the choke points,” I suggested.

“And the litter up there, the degradation of our skies; a problem for future generations to clean up.”

“A wanton disregard for ecological stewardship,” I say, paraphrasing a line I read somewhere while looking out over the indifferent, constant flow of the springtime river course and wondering when a river is at its best.

He returns his mug to his stomach after a satisfying sip and says, “Monopolising orbital space is much like monopolising global trade routes.”

“Global power play.”

“Precisely.”

Orbital real estate, establish and extend dominion, all at risk of atmospheric health. He was right, repeated patterns, though shifting sovereign state power perhaps into corporate hands. I commented, “It will weaken the countries.”

“We’re indulging in patternicity.”

He was always going to throw in a big word. He did this: found patterns while I stumbled under the weight of facts. I remembered when we were younger, hiking through the hills, and he had us listening for predators who were no longer there. We stopped at every rustle of wind, every scratch in the dust, wanting evidence and fearing it at the same time. We were imagining things, of course; the predators’ time had long since run out.

We tell our historical stories, find our patterns, and carry them with us through the seasons. But as I gazed into the daytime blue beyond the clouds, I pondered which patterns endure where no seasons realign us. How can we distinguish when order reveals discovery and when it merely reflects habit? How do we tell the difference between a warning and a story we have decided not to believe?

“Ready to drift again?” I ask.

Earlier, before the tea and the biscuits, someone at the campsite had told us not to swim after rain. From the bank, the current seemed sluggish, yet such marked its most perilous state. He had laughed and said rivers were always being misread. I had laughed too.

We leave our picnic site in the bend of the silent river, dampening down the fire, putting rocks on our belongings should the wind hound us, and walk along the trail running beside the riverbank. It’s cool out of the sun, under the tall trees’ shade, and without shoes we tread warily.

After a while, we reach our entry point, a wide sweep of the waters, and pick our way across the tumbled rocks, making our way through the chilling shallows into the flowing river. It’s cold and I allow myself time to adjust, to get used to it, before I submerge myself. With quick strokes I swim out until I feel the current; how quickly it grasps me. I am in its grip. I turn to float on my back and let go.

He flips onto his stomach and swims against the flow of the river. I do too. The flow is strong. My legs kick, my arms, my shoulders work and cycle and work and cycle. Bound by organic energy, I turn my head to one side to breathe. I open my eyes and see the magnificent sentinel river tree staring down at me, at my endeavours. Then I am in the water against the flow, face down, my legs, my arms, my shoulders synchronised. I turn my head to breathe. I see the tree, safe and still untouched. I am holding my place in this river, but my strength is being depleted; I can feel it. My lungs crave; I suck in the air. The next time I turn my head from the water, I am no longer in my place in the river. I see the tree, but it is ahead of me. I suck in the air, but I am no longer holding my own. I flip onto my back and allow the river to carry me. I drift.