The world at rest

Eyes lighting on an inflatable globe across the room, I can't help thinking what a strange notion is a country. What curious shapes they make across the world, invisible to all but the cartographer. Roughly outlined, like the narrow beach that is Chile, by natural features and stalemates over which eager armies might not pass in the furtherance of their ambition. Instead, the enclaves of language, custom and character persist. But so too does the ambition. Will it always be so? What curious shapes indeed.

Ridges of stone, mountains of bone, rivers in flood and gullies of blood. That's what countries are made of.