If you’re the type of person that likes to light out from time to time, get behind the wheel and head for the horizon – eventually, if you keep on going far enough, you’ll come to a line on the map.
That line may be invisible to the naked eye – it may be clear as a fast-flowing river. But a certain feeling tends to hit you when you reach one of these places – the edge of one country, beginning of the next. Borders. Strange places. Especially deserted ones.
A lonely, far-flung frontier can pose all manner of questions. What must it be like on the other side? Might life be better? Remote borders are places things happen – and always have done. Full of ghosts, they’ve been fought over forever, racked by conflict and strife.
Why set a story in a place like that? Because people are faced with choices, often hard choices, standing on a line between one world and the next. A border suggests a certain kind of freedom – but demands certain things in return. In the past, a man might raid across a line, steal cattle or horses, hoping to return home, beyond the reach of law. Conversely, he better be ready to defend his own when the other side decide to pay a call.
To me, a frontier is where man-made constructs; country, nation, state, law, impact on people’s real lives in a way few other places can claim to do. And where the choice is between abiding by the law or breaking it, what might you choose? On a lonely, far-flung border. With no-one looking…
Recent Comments