Outside
Dear President Carter,
I once knew the name of every tree in the world, before it fell apart.
I was born on an island in the Southeast Pacific, though we did not call it that, closest to Antarctica and Chile, but still far from both. We were fortunate: small, only half a day's walk across, and far in the southern cold. We did not attract explorers and banana farmers, like other, less fortunate islands. Until the invention of the satellite, we were not known to exist. We were "uncontacted" in your parlance, though I have come to learn that even this status is not unique.
Our world, our cosmology, would seem simple to you. A small, rocky island surrounded by an endless ocean. One crop to master, a hardy and nutritious kind of sweet potato.
But that does not mean that we were simple! The human mind has a fixed capacity for detail. When there is more, it backs up, takes in a wider view. When there is less, it steps closer, and makes a finer distinction.
