The heavens and sea of the “gray zone” are dimmed by fog and lit by one of the last standing lighthouses, its spinning lamp fully automated, its unnecessary keepers flown in by helicopter for twenty-eight day shifts—with no light-keeping to do they count migrating birds and stand in for sovereignty, fishermen on both sides ignoring the keepers and circling the no man's sea around a rock that neither Canada nor the U.S. are willing to dispute in court, both sides agreeing that purgatory is good enough and entirely appropriate for a treeless stone that might be Dante's if it weren't antipodally nowhere and exactly in-between everything that matters.
