ABSTRACT
I prefer to live near the mountains or the ocean. To make do in the midwest, where I now live and where there are no mountains or ocean, I reside by a very large lake-an ocean-sized one whose eastern shore I cannot see from the vantage point I have access to a short walk from my home. It is a lake whose southern border is 90 miles away near Chicago, and whose opposite shore is a several hours drive in the wilds of the north. These are geographic interruptions, these mountains, oceans, or great lakes. Should my thinking or my actions ever get complacent, these interruptions remind me that my world is not tightly circumscribed, that it does not end at the end of my street, at the end of my town, or at the end of my city. They create for me the possibility of lives lived differently-mine and others. On the other side of the mountains, on the other side of the ocean, on the other shores of the lake, things are likely to be different. That is solace; the possibility for difference and for expansion fuels me.
