On almost all of my social media profiles I have the phrase “Follow The Ley Lines.”

And on my portfolio site where I advertise my services as a Vancouver-based brand and digital strategist, I used to have a page that explained what this meant:

The theory of ley lines says that certain prominent sites, like mountain tops and trees, line up with each other in such a way that they imbue the space between them or near them with mystical power or that a combination of natural and manmade landmarks helped guide ancient travellers across the landscape.
Although you can easily draw a straight line from one random point to another and connect a number of random points in between (giving the illusion of order from chaos), I think that using cultural ley lines is an important way of arriving at insights.
We often have a lot of data points or information to look at, and it isn’t always easy to connect the dots. Sometimes doing so takes a few leaps, and you'll have to use another piece of data as a reference point. At worst, you'll come across some interesting territory you might not have explored before.
So to that, you’ll always find me following the ley lines. They might not always take me to my destination, but I know I’ll learn something along the way.

The concept of ley lines is originally attributed to ancient druids, and it was said to be how they navigated across the land but also how they found places of power to work their magic. I kept the magic part out of my original inspirational copy because it sounded a little bit too mystical.

I also kept out of my original post the fact that the entire idea of ley lines was only proposed in the 1920s, by a fellow named Alfred Watkins, who was largely discredited. As most historians and archeologists pointed out, it would have been impractical to travel across the land just by going peak to peak. As usual, the Wikipedia article is worth a read and has more on him.

At least though his explanation was slightly plausible. A group of people in the middle of last century extrapolated on it and said “Actually, no - ley lines weren’t used by ancient travellers. They are actually highways and navigation used by UFOs and space travellers.”

That concept likely led to how I first heard of ley lines: from the RIFTS roleplaying game. If you’re not familiar with RIFTS, just imagine Dungeons & Dragons, but with instead of just dragons there are also cyborgs, aliens, dinosaurs, and ninjas and instead of dungeons there are interdimensional portals that allow this incredible mix. The portals happen at places where the

It’s super weird, even for people who are into weird sci-fi and fantasy stuff. For 14-year-old me who found it at the comic book store next to the Star Wars section, it was everything. And it was an entry into the rabbit hole of other universes and ways of thinking.

I’ve written about my love of sci-fi before (editor’s note: it’s almost all Parker writes about these days), and flipping through RIFTS sourcebooks were a big part of that. It showed me how weird things could get.

And all of that weirdness makes me love the concept of ley lines even more. It’s layers of weirdness all the way down, and each one is more interesting.

In a world where we are all chasing hyperefficiency and optimization, and where Generative AI is making everything revert to a creative and inspirational mean, I’m going to continue to Follow The Ley Lines to whatever weird, esoteric, implausible, and impractical place they send me to.

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