Chapter 5: The Plane and the Planet Summary and Analysis

Antoine opens this chapter by pointing out that planes' allowing humans a birds-eye-view of their planet has allowed for a certain removal of innocence and the possibility of romanticizing their home orb. Where roads are able to run along the most choice of landscapes, highlighting and touring the traveler through the plush and civilized, planes pull away the curtain on the barren and desolate as well as the remote and beautiful.

The first of three sections in this chapter opens with his description of the lava planes south of the Gallegos River on the way to the Straits of Magellan. Quiet following their centuries of eruptions, they are barren and mute, covered with black glaciers. Then south of those, older glaciers of volcanic rock that have begun to incubate life in...