After takeoff the plane banks over the lake, dipping its wing toward the mountains, and through the window you see in quick succession the different parts of the local copper mine – the smelter smokestack like a small black pencil, the blue-green tailings pond, the vast open pit. The pit is one of those things of which it is always being said, This is one of the seven man-made structures visible from space.
The pit drops down into the dirt by tiers, like a ziggurat or step pyramid, the sort that Mesopotamian astronomers built to watch the heavens.
The other passengers appear not to be looking, perhaps because they have seen the spectacle so many times, or because they do not know what they are not looking at.