Off the Beaten Track-Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana, West Africa
I’ve had enough of your travel elitism and disillusionment! Continue reading
The Disillusionment of Travel
Category Archives: Thoughts and Musings
Timeless Travel Inspiration.
Reading by Lantern
“But romance and rapture, the capacity for wonder and admiration will reamin wherever there are young unregimented hearts.”
I read a fair amount. I haven’t always been this way, and in fact, until college I rarely read for pleasure at all. But now, it is somewhat of an addiction, a transportation, therapeutic, riveting, disarming. And it would come as no surprise that I spend a decent amount of time reading travel literature. For obvious reasons, I connect with the stories of adventurers. Aside from entertaining, these books serve as inspiration and a reminder that this obsession I have with travel isn’t so strange; there are many of us out there, dreaming of adventure. I’ll read most anything related to travel from classics (Bruce Chatwin) to contemporary (Theroux) and everything in between. Continue reading
A Year in Review: 2011 in Photos
Happy New Year!
Perhaps it’s too obvious to say, but, well it’s true: this year has gone by far too fast. It feels like it’s only been a few months since bringing in the new year in Peru. And while this year, I’ll be spending New Years Eve in the slightly less exotic Washington State, I’m glad I get to spend it with family and old friends.
It’s been a wonderful, if not slightly strange year. It was the first year I didn’t know exactly what I would be doing any given day, week, or month. And not too surprisingly, everything worked out, despite some personal concerns regarding the sort of fly by the seat of my pants situation. And in fact, this sort of willingness to change directions at any moment has provided a multitude of opportunities I may not have been able to have, had I dug in roots and made definite plans. It may seem trivial, but for a slightly-compulsive-overplanner such as myself, it was a much needed lesson in just chilling the heck out. Continue reading
Success Through the Lens of Travel
I have often written that travel has changed me. An obvious, and inadequate statement. Yet, I constantly struggled to put into words what exactly had changed. Simply, it was a feeling. Everything was different somehow, better, and worse. But mostly just different. For many, travel is humbling, enlightening, or inspiring. For others, all they take away is a blanketed idea of “thank God I don’t live here.”. There is no generalization. Just as each traveler perceives the adventure differently, what each takes away is often starkly different. I suppose I ought to clarify, the travel to which I refer is not a vacation, though a perfect worthwhile and even occasionally enlightening use of time, but what I’m referring to I can only equate to a journey. The sort where you are thrust out into the world, forced to encounter it as it is, in all of it’s awe-inspiring beauty, and all of it’s cold ugliness; exposed. It is impossible to venture out into the world in this way, and not to be changed. Perhaps it is life changing, but maybe it’s much less, a small seed that will go undetected, but will continue to shape your life in a way unique to the experience. If you were to suggest travel has not changed you, I would be emboldened to suggest that you are either simply wrong, or that there is something greatly wrong with you has a human being.
Colliding With The Earth 