If you look at human existence from the vantage point of your favorite Cosmic Deity and then speed up the picture to a countless power of ten, you’d see a bunch of little dots racing towards each other, colliding together to form tiny clusters, and then breaking apart and spinning away.  That’s all people do.  They come together and make families or communities, which then spin off into other communities or simply break apart to re-form somewhere else.

For a brief time, one of those blips wasn’t part of any cluster or community.  But he has since rejoined one.  This was the Unabomber, and he’s trying very hard not to drop any soap right now.

From our own vantage point, all of this results in an important truth: it doesn’t really matter where you are.  It’s more important whom you’re with.  And for that reason, I sometimes find my fellow travelers more interesting than the scenery around us.

Some of them have been traveling for months, even as much as a year.  They barely talk; they don’t get off the bus to see the latest waterfall or mountain range.  They carry food around in plastic grocery bags.  I can’t tell if they’ve been on the road so long that they’ve forgotten why they started in the first place, or if they’re involved in a very private bliss that I’m not allowed to understand.

People whom you get used to suddenly disappear, having decided to stay in one of the cities for an extra day.  It’s startling when you realize they’re no longer part of your group.  When one particular person decided to leave us, Tuan made a movie geek remark that was relatively out of character for him (but would have been totally in character for me): “The Fellowship is breaking up.”

But there’s also people who stay with the entourage.  And some of them you get to know.  Martina, a tall, beautiful German, has become our friend.  We’ve learned a lot about her.  She’s getting a Ph.D. in economics, hates seafood, drinks three cups of coffee a day, has a place that overlooks Roman ruins, and loves to ballroom dance. She scoffs at the notion that Germans love David Hasselhoff, but is nevertheless able to name the title of his big hit single.  She surprises me by laughing at my jokes--one because it means her English is good enough to get them, and also because people whose first language is English tend to not laugh at my jokes.  But, I mean, she’s German. They need to laugh, what with the state of their economy and the fact that they have to go around saying words like “bratwurst” all day.

New Zealand is nice.  But we could just as easily be in Cleveland, Ohio. Or Siberia. Or floating in outer space like astronauts.  Drinking beer concentrate out of plastic pouches.  Listening to pub music piped in through our space helmets.  Snapping pictures of ringed planets.  At least, for a few more days.  Until we break apart and spin away.