Shipping out!

Here on the Western Slope, on the skirts of the world's largest flattop mountain, the Grand Mesa, all voyages -- even a ten-minute trip to the Post Office -- happen in a fantastic landscape. Living and visiting on such a terrain inspired Theo and Joe to ask a question: How have authors of voyages in imaginary worlds mapped their ways? We propose to begin our own journey with reading Jonathan Swift's Gullver's Travels. As we read, we'll comment, upload maps of Gulliver's voyages, deposit images of his adventures, and discover the past and present meaning of this "most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions." Some may think that imaginary voyages are the idle play of people with too much time on their hands. We think otherwise. Here's Jonathan Swift's take on books about imaginary trips to far-off places: "I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other." So put aside Tolkien's Lord of the Rings and Lessing's Shikasta and ship out with us.