Colorado Antipode

Most of the Earth is ocean, so dry land on opposite sides of the planet is rare. In the United States, there are only a couple of small spots where you could drill straight through the center and come out on land. One is about ten miles south of Lamar, Colorado. Its antipode is Île Amsterdam, a French volcanic island in the Indian Ocean, roughly 1,700 miles from Madagascar, Australia, and Antarctica. The only way there is a 27-day round trip on a French research ship.

I've been preoccupied with lines and distances for a long time, and this is a long-term research project that will someday become artwork. Its center is a performative walk: the island's 18-mile coastline, transposed onto the Colorado land and walked as precisely as I can with a sub-meter GNSS receiver, tracked on an iPad. My first night there, I made a long-exposure photograph at the point above the center of the island's caldera, with a vertical laser beam marking the line through the planet at those coordinates. Someday, I want to walk the real coast.

The route crosses ground owned by fifteen landowners, and I decided not to step on any of it without permission. Thirteen said no, which I understand, with rattlesnakes and liability high on the list. Two took me around their family ranches, each 50,000 acres or more. I covered parts of the route by foot and ATV, and flew the whole path at about 80 feet in a helicopter with cameras under the belly. So far I've walked about 12 percent of the coastline. I'm not done asking, and I'll do the rest by ATV or on horseback if I have to.