BENCHMARKS - Maphead - page 47

Borders have fascinated me since childhood: I remember staying very alert on family
vacations so I could register the exact moment our 1979 Mercury Zephyr crossed the line
between,say,WashingtonandOregon.Tothisday,IliketoseeborderswhenItravel;many
give up secrets in person that you can't see on the map. You know that seemingly straight
line of Manitoba's western border, the one that makes Saskatchewan such an eye-catching
trapezoid on a globe? It's actually a pixelated zigzag, running maybe twenty miles north
at a time before taking an abrupt one-mile “stair step” to the west. The Belgian town of
Baarle-Hertog is even more intriguing: it's made up of no fewer than twenty-six separate
pieces of Belgium sitting, thanks to a complicated series of medieval treaties between two
warring dukes, in the middle of the Netherlands. Some of these little bits of Belgium have
little bits of the Netherlands inside them, leading to an impossibly intricate border that di-
vides some village homes in half between the two nations. Your nationality depends on
where your front door is, and residents have been known to “emigrate” by moving their
door every time the tax laws change. When bars and restaurants in the Netherlands close,
landlords just move their tables onto the Belgian side of their establishment and keep on
serving.
In search of the most exotic border crossing of all, I insisted to my wife that our trip
to Thailand last year should include a side trip to the Angkor temples of Cambodia—by
bus. Why? Because I'd always wanted to find out what happens when you cross between
a drives-on-the-left country (like Thailand) into a drives-on-the-right one (Cambodia).
Would there be an overpass? A roundabout? An endless stream of hilarious traffic acci-
dents?WeweredisappointedtolearnthattheborderbetweenAranyaprathet,Thailand,and
Poi Pet, Cambodia, is a traffic-free no-man's-land with only the occasional semi pulling
throughafteritclearscustoms.Maybemostpeoplewouldn'tgotothelengthofafour-hour
bustripthroughtheThaijungle,butIknowI'mnottheonlyonewhogetsthisliminalthrill
from standing on borders. Four Corners Monument, where Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and
New Mexico meet, is in the middle of nowhere. But two hundred thousand visitors make
the trek each year to straddle a small round plaque and enjoy whatever the strange rush is
that comes from being in four states at once. *
Borders may start out as arbitrary, but they don't stay that way for long. The British
travel writer Mike Parker has noted that the Earth, seen from orbit, is no longer a border-
less,utopian“bigbluemarble”:wherenationsmeet,sodotheiragendasandpolicies.From
miles above the Earth, you can see the straight line where heavily forested western Russia
meets the cow pastures of eastern Finland or where a stretch of Montana grassland meets
irrigated strips of farm country in southwest Saskatchewan. The most dramatic example
is the heavily militarized “demilitarized zone” between the two Koreas, just a half hour's
drive north of Seoul, where I grew up. By day, the rift in the divided peninsula is almost
invisible from space, but by night, the cities of South Korea are brightly lit, while isolated,