NOVEMBER 7, 2019 – I’m lucky to have traveled round the globe, literally, crisscrossing oceans, continents, the equator, the Arctic Circle, the Tropic of Cancer, the Tropic of Capricorn. Whenever possible I’ve looked out the window of car, train, ship, and plane. On foot, bike or skis, I’ve peered as far and wide as I can. Yet I doubt I’ve laid eyes on as much as 1% of the earth’s surface. That works out to less than 1% of 196.9 million square miles. I’ll let you do the rest of the math—and let you round up.
Bottom line even as a world traveler: I’ve seen precious little of earth.
Not so of the moon, to which, ironically, I’ve never traveled. Of that heavenly orb, I’ve seen a full half, or more precisely, exactly half when the moon is full. The moon’s surface is 44.4 million square miles, but as the reader doubtless knows, since the duration of the Moon’s rotation equals the time of its revolution around the earth, I’ve never seen the “dark” side of the moon. Nevertheless, 50% and 22.2 million square miles of the lunar surface are whopping figures in contrast to what I’ve seen of earth.
Yesterday evening while hiking in “Little Switzerland,” specifically on my ascent of the Eiger and across the Aletsch Glacier, I caught a magnificent view of the waxing moon. In the clear, cold air, our one and only natural satellite seemed closer than its known distance of 250,000 miles.
The moon’s bright silver magnificence slowed my pace, then stopped me altogether. The longer I gazed, the closer the moon appeared. My eyes followed the perimeter of the dark gray plains and bumped along the rugged ranges around them. I highlighted to myself the obvious: nothing except earth’s thin atmosphere and a big vacuum beyond separated my retinas from those plains and mountains!
As I continued my hike past the Jungfrau toward St. Moritz, I contemplated my lifelong “visuals” of the moon in contrast to my cumulative, lifetime views of my home planet: 50% vs. < 1%. Odds are, I’ll never make it into space deep far enough to see the earth as a whole, and even if my future earth-bound travels should increase my collective views all the way to 1%, I will never lay eyes on the other 99%.
Just think about that! You can travel far and wide—northern, southern, western, eastern hemispheres—eyes wide open, peering out of the window at all times, and you will never see more than 1% of the earth!
The foregoing pondering led inevitably to the next: how short-sighted I am. If I’ve seen only a smidgeon, I thought, I know less than 1% of that smidgeon. That works out–allow me to do the math–to less than 0.00 . . . 000 . . . 001% of what there is to know. If an alien were to land in my backyard and ask, “So, what’s up down here?” I’d be grossly overstating things if I said, “I don’t know the half of it!” but wholly truthful if I added, “I suffer from extreme myopia.”
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© 2019 Eric Nilsson
