Movement on Earth

I’m always impressed by human and animal migrations of all kinds. Right now in China due to the New Year, people are traveling all over the country to visit family and relatives for the holidays. 9.95B trips are expected over the holiday period and it’s an amazing feat of movement in a short period of time.

In 2025, 650 million people made the trip for the Kumbh Mela in India, a celebration of cleansing that happens every 12 years at a specific site, though there are four sites that host at varying intervals based on the alignments of Jupiter, the sun, and our moon. A new city is basically erected on site for a month or more and then broken down and disappears again. One might compare it to the best known US example of Burning Man.

But to create our own human movement we often constrain others as Ben Goldfarb notes in his book Crossings. Domesticated and wild animals have movements as well that pay no attention to borders but are being constrained by development and roads.

The Italian transhumance is a migration of sheep from their summer home in Abruzzo across the Apennines Mountains to their winter grazing grounds in Puglia. The movement has been done for centuries and in numerous countries as part of a healthy connection to the land. And you’re likely familiar with the annual movement of Wildebeast in Tanzania from various nature shows.

For all of our settlements and the roots we’ve put down, a bit of movement is natural and makes us connected even if it’s just visiting a local festival or cultural moment. But we must be aware of the ways in which we enable but also constrain. As I sit in my office at home on a rainy day without having taken my morning walk, perhaps I need a little movement as well.

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