The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

2. The Navel of the World

ON EASTER ISLAND, OR RAPA NUI, WHERE I WAS camping and paddling my kayak, traveling for my Happy Isles of Oceania book, an islander said to me, "This is the pito."I said, "Really?" The term is a cognate of the Hawaiian word (piko) for navel. The Easter Islander went on,"Te Pito te Henua,"and explained: Navel of the World. ¶ Perhaps just the delusion you would entertain on a smallish windswept rock in the middle of a cold ocean, two thousand miles from the nearest land. But it seems that the name may have been derived from the birth of a child by a woman who had just arrived on the first canoe, guided by the way-finder Hotu-Matua, the original ancestor and discoverer of Rapa Nui. The ritual cutting of the baby's navel may have been the earliest human ritual performed on the island. The date of this is disputed, but it would have been somewhere around the year 500—amazing when you consider the canoe-building and navigational skills required for such a voyage. W. J. Thomson, in his exhaustive ethnographic study of the island, Te Pito te Henua, claims that this was the name that Hotu-Matua gave to the island on encountering it. Seen from a distance, the singular volcanic formation, the dead cone of Rana Raraku, a lump of bare rock in an empty sea, certainly looks like a petrified bellybutton.

In Delphi, Greece, wandering for The Pillars of Hercules, I was shown a rock and told by a guide in a solemn voice that it was the Omphalos, the Navel of the World. This got me thinking about the belief that one's village or town is the center of the world. I am from Boston, and from childhood heard Boston referred to locally as "the Hub" — usually by headline writers of the Boston Globe. The Hub is actually the short form of "the Hub of the Universe." This hyperbole derives from Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table, writing about a Bostonian who says, "Boston State House is the hub of the solar system."

It seems to me a harmless conceit. Here is a list of other earthly navels:

China: The Chinese called (and still call) their country Zhongguo, the Middle Kingdom, meaning the center of the world.

Arizona: Baboquivari Peak, near Sasabe in Pima County. The Tohono O'odham people regard this mountain as the Navel of the World, the place where, after the great flood subsided, humans emerged to populate the earth.

Cuzco, Peru: In Creation myth the word "Qosqo," in Quechua, means "the Navel of the World," and Cuzco was regarded as such by the Inca.

Jerusalem: The Al Aqsa Mosque ("the Furthermost") is dome-shaped to reflect the belief that it marks the Navel of the World.

Mecca, Saudi Arabia: The Kaaba, the most sacred site in Islam, is also said to be the Navel of the World. An Islamic text: "Forty years before Allah created the heavens and earth, the Kaaba was a dry spot floating on water, and from it the world has been spread out" (quoted in Rivka Gonen, Contested Holiness,2003).

Mexico: Pacanda Island, on Lake Patzcuaro in Mexico, has made a claim to be the Navel of the World.

Colombia: To the Arhuaco and Kogi peoples, who call themselves the Elder Brothers of humanity, the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta range is called the Center of the World.

Faroe Islands: Torshavn, the capital of the Faroe Islands, was often called the Navel of the World by its most famous local author, William Heinesen (1900–1991), whose passionate nationalism perhaps led him to this delusion. He spoke Faroese but wrote in Danish.

Ayutthaya, Thailand: Wat Phra Si San Phet, built in 1448 by King Boromtrilokanath in this ancient former capital (1350–1767) of Siam, was called the Center of the World.

Bodh Gaya, India: It is said that this holy site is the place where the Buddha sat when he was enlightened, which is called Vajrasana, meaning Diamond Throne. It was believed that when the universe is finally destroyed, this will be the last place to disappear and the first place to re-form when the universe begins again.

Perm, Russia: Nine thousand Permians voted in an Internet poll to have a monument built on a spot to be designated Navel of the Earth.