Great Circle Routes – In Praise of the Journey by Mike Garrett
It is late afternoon or early evening and the giant airliner begins its acceleration down
the runway much like a slingshot dragster discharged suddenly toward its quarter mile finish
line. On board among the three hundred passengers and crew is the smaller academic
expeditionary peace force that will represent northern Minnesota’s finest center of academic
studies and more symbolically the entire state and the country for eight weeks among lands
and peoples on the eastern side of the North Atlantic. This is the annual Eurospring group
from Bemidji State University and they are en-route to encounters of a special kind with
people of foreign places, but also with themselves. These are very special people. They made
the commitment to go. Most in the group are new at such ventures; the rapid departure and
the anticipation of it all is writ knowingly across their quiet, sober faces. It will be a night
passage under a canopy of stars As quickly as these words have been read the aircraft lifts off
and up from America to begin the long arc of travel via a great circle route to culminate at a
soft landfall in southern England. With a steady and mild hum the near sub-orbital flight into
the stratosphere is now leaving the tapestry of amber, white and green lights delineating the
western style grid pattern of the metro area. Ahead, the path leads over few glimpses of light
on the blackened landscape seven miles below as the sleek star ship moves north by northeast
over Duluth, Isle Royale, the Canadian Shield, Quebec Province, across Labrador, the
southern tip of Greenland, south off Iceland, and then southeastward over Northern Ireland,
the Irish Sea, the English Lakes District, the Midlands, over Oxfordshire, and into the
airspaces of Kent in southeastern England where the safe landing will occur south of London.
For much of this eight-hour voyage our special group has adjusted predictably with reading,
listening to CDs, watching movies or the synoptic map on video monitors charting the
progress of the course, making journal entries, furtive trips to the john, and just trying to
sleep. Somewhere long before sightings of landfall with the British Isles, sunrise has begun a
yellow and orange and red glow along the curve of our spherical planet as some passengers
begin to waken and stir and stretch to gaze out the windows. The airship is sailing, almost
quietly, through the thin fluid of the atmosphere. Stars and perhaps a moon are engulfing the
larger scene and below are scattered clouds over a reflecting sea. A sense of aloneness
within the big bird is acutely appreciated with these reference features outside and beyond
the seemingly small wings. Soon breakfast service is beginning and life is cranking up for
another day as the sky becomes brightened and lightened with blue. Another day but one
experienced somewhere new. And with it can now be glimpsed, among guarding clouds, the
rural fundament of England with its irregular quilt like pattern of small green, brown, and
beige parcels outlined by dark hedgerows of an olden cultural landscape interrupted by small
clusters of urban settlements and meandering roadways. The transport has spiraled down to
much lower altitudes on its approach to what will rise up very fast as the point of
disembarkation, the terminal. But this will be a beginning, and yes, they have arrived.
Eurospring is now in country. Watches are adjusted six hours ahead and two hours remain of
jet lag via coach ride to Oxford. The return voyage will occur in two months from Frankfurt
am Main, via another great circle route. This time it will be a daylight passage. A great circle
provides the shortest pathway between any two points on the earth. Following one to its full
completion as a circle would bisect the earth into halves and return the traveler to his or her
point of beginning. Great circles represent the journey, not the destination. These students
are pursuing the journey.