Musings about Travel

Today's Painting: "Gotta Go" by Janet Strayer, see janetstrayerart.com 

mutiple canvas mixed-media artwork by Janet Stayer, www.wix.com/janetstrayer/paintings

"I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad", said G.B. Shaw, and I agree with him. Not that home is bad. Not at all. I live in a good spot on the globe. And not that I seek discomfort. No way. This blog is about living creatively WELL, after all. My 'travel-in-the-rough' days are over because I wouldn't be able to enjoy them now as I once did. Besides, "rough" is relative. Although I've travelled on very limited budgets and hitchhiked and backpacked when I felt comfortable-enough doing so, I was never the rugged ragged traveller. And I certainly am not now. Age is not the determinant. 

One of my traveling mentors, a woman some years older than I, has taken a big trip once a year for many years. To this day she loves very challenging travel to exotic and hard-to-reach places. She's hiked Kilimanjaro twice in recent years, re-visited Bhutan, the hills of Vietnam, gone trekking in Africa, and around the world she continues. Last year she sent a photo of  herself in shorts and hiking boots, sitting cross-legged on the ground and being approached by mountain gorillas at the eco-reserve founded by Diane Fossey. She's the most adventurous traveller I know personally and she's managed most of it during her yearly vacations from demanding work. 

In contrast, though I've done some of that kind of traveling, what I like best is to go somewhere that seems interesting to me and stay there a bit, to live there if I can. Sometimes, to make several visits back and see what more I can see. Though less physically active, what I share with my wonderful friend is a sense of adventure, an openness to new experience, a willingness to accommodate to new environments, to assimilate, to learn and enjoy myself in new surrounds.

Today's Thought

I soon realized that no journey carries one far unless, as it extends into the world around us, it goes an equal distance into the world within.  

Lillian Smith, U.S. novelist (Strange Fruit) and social critic

More and more frequently the edges
of me dissolve and I become 
a wish to assimilate the world    
Margaret Atwood poem (More and More)

Today's Painting #2

Child Out of Time: Bubble

In my view, travel as part of a life-adventure isn't and can't be fully comfortable. Travel has to disequilibrate, to shift things around a little both inside and out. Optimal disequilibration is a motivating drive to human development. It's that curious and exciting space between the familiar and the almost but not- quite grasped.  

Like my friend, traveling for me isn't a rest so much as a change. To hazard an improvement on that old saying: sometimes a change is a lot better than a rest. Maybe Seneca had it right again: travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.