Apparently 2.9% of the worlds surface area is inhabited by humans. (Thanks, internet!)
And after 2 days of the Canadian Shield and the Prairies, by rail, one asks “Really, that much?”
No where else can really make you feel that small than the big empty of this chunk of our country.
Other places can make you feel small, of course, we’re small and tiny creatures clinging to the surface of a rock hurtling through the cosmos. But this particular kind of small, of the relentless miles, of the distance between everything, in ways that a car trip obscures (with the towns and gas stations and frequent stops, the points of interest), and air travel annihilates by dint of being above the clouds (and by finishing a four-day trip in four-hours).
It’s instructive, it’s educational. Edifying even.
I feel that everyone should do it at least once, in the same way that you see proposals that “everyone should have to work for a month (or year!) in x”, where x stands for the job that’s the author’s bugaboo, be it retail or waiting tables or delivery or whatever.
(FWIW, that proposal usually won’t work as intended, because one of the takeaways for the proposal is that it is tied to “living off the wage of the job in question”, and those that might learn something from it can just skate by insulating themselves from it with money.)
“But it might work for us”