Population Density

I was looking at a map of global population density: a swath of the deepest blood red across the north of India, along the Ganga River Valley, the Chinese seaboard, the little stain of the Nile river in the upper-right corner of the Africa, sinuous like a flower stem then blossoming at the delta; the florid red of the New England seaboard giving way to scarlet pocks and pimples behind the Appalachians, gradually dissipating into a pale sienna past the Mississippi like a fade-away tie-dye.

And for a moment I wondered if one might yet seek out the white empty spaces, and slip through them into obscurity and contentment, or if even there we are pursued if not preceded by red.