Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Hogzilla debunking was another example of the pesky trend toward factuality cur-
rently sweeping the out-of-doors. Technology, of course, is at the root of it. The global land-
scape used to be a theater of various shadings—sunlit fields and canyons of dark obscurity,
trackless jungles, and misty Shangri-las. Now the whole world is like a cineplex when the
lights have come on. Almost no place on the surface of the planet is really obscure anymore.
Satellites watch it all and can let you know to the millimeter how far continental drift moved
yourswimmingbeachlastyear.What'supalongthebanksofthegreat,gray-greenLimpopo?
How's traffic on the road to Mandalay? What's the snowpack like across the wide Missouri?
The Internet or Google Earth will tell you.
Traveling in Siberia a decade ago, I thought I was pretty much beyond the reach of
checkability; in fact-checker shorthand, anything I wrote would be “OA,” which stands for
“on author,” meaning “unverifiable by anything other than the author's say-so.” I did not
need to worry that any checker would visit where I had been, nor was it likely that an irate
readerwouldwriteinclaimingIhadgotsomethingwrongaboutthetundrazoneoftheChuk-
chi Peninsula, given the difficulty of getting there and the absence of any reason to go. But
then time and advancing technology proved me wrong. During the many years my Siberian
researchtook,satelliteimageryoftheearth'ssurfacebecameavailableonline,andmyclaims
about the lay of the land in Siberia proved to be checkable after all. Even in far-flung places,
descriptions could be verified. If I said there was no bridge over a remote Far Eastern river
that I had crossed by ferry, the checker could look on Google Earth and see that, in fact, no
bridge showed up in the satellite photo, and a small boat much like a ferry could be seen
crossing there.
Today the adventurer's tale-telling days are over and his crooked ways have been made
straight, and every untruth can be revealed. No point in lying: we've got it all on tape, as the
TV detectives say. If you claim you drove to Nunavut and we think maybe you didn't, we'll
just look at the E-ZPass records for the toll roads along the way. And if they don't tell us,
the cell phone towers will. Formerly, a cell phone tower could follow a phone only when the
phonewason,andsmartcriminalsknewtoturnitoffbeforecommittingcrimes.Nowphones
ping the towers and the towers record the presence of the cell phones in the vicinity, often
whether they are on or not, and to escape the network's observation you must remove the
battery entirely. Almost everywhere, some degree of electronic connection can be assumed.
I never took much notice of the satellites going over constantly until I was out in the night
in Siberia, with its grand darkness. In the middle of the Barabinsk Steppe or some other
nowhere, I always studied the night sky before getting into my tent. Amid the stars' wild
randomness, the little dots of light crossed the heavens on routes as purposeful and direct
as a cue-ball shot. I carried a satellite phone myself. Sometimes I would pick a likely look-
ing satellite and shoot a call to it (I thought; actually, the link was more complicated, and to
a satellite I didn't see) and then do something ordinary like make an appointment with my
