Quandary

So long as I keep it simple, it is neither above nor beneath my dignity to ask myself why I would choose one place over all possible other places in the world to travel to. I've been around a little bit. I've been in the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel tower, the Grand Canyon, Knots Berry Farm, Disneyland, the Cumberland Gap, Gettysburg, the Space Needle, Yosemite, the top of Mt. Shasta and Whitney. I've been to Nepal and trekked to Everest base camp, swapped gifts with Sherpas, had my car rocked by angry striking rickshaw drivers in Dacca. Walked in the wagon ruts in the prairie of Wyoming, retraced the battle of the Little Bighorn. Gone down the Colorado in a raft. Lots of places. Just a drop in the bucket really, though, like one hundredth of one per cent of what I would like to see, what I truly hunger to see. Victoria Falls, for instance. The pyramids. The remote places in the British Isles. But if I were to choose one single place above all the others and that place were Everest base camp, I would like to think that before I went to the trouble of going there, even before I went to the trouble of singling it out as a place to dream of going, I would realize that you don't climb to base camp. You walk there. Is dreaming about a place merely turning it into an abstraction like the Emerald City of Oz or is it the first step in taking you out of a small world into a bigger one and turning fantasy into reality?>>>

When you plan and dream about a place, read about it and see the pictures, you develop an image of the place. With rare exceptions the one thing the fantasy lacks is the gritty reality of the place. You only experience the grit by actually going there. But that's OK. Usually a little grit is good. It brings the place down to earth.>>>

I think the place is what you make it. All I ever wanted to see was the Taj Mahal but when I finally got there, I was so dog tired, sick of the beggars, sick of the sight of bodies in the streets, left to decompose where they died, that all I could do was snap a couple of shots and get out. I wish I could re-visit now. The place may be best visited without a dream or a plan. Like a meticulously planned party that fails to live up to expectations, as opposed to nipping out for a quick pint on a Friday night and ending up staying far longer than intended because of the unexpected good time. Introspection figures largely into where you feel most comfortable I think. A base camp on Everest would'nt be my cup of tea. The beaches of Lacanau Ocean I will always long for. I love museums, but can only take so much due to the enormous amount of information and the mental exhaustion that creeps up and turns you to face the exit for a sandwhich and soda. But when my parents would act as tour guides for visiting relatives, exchange students etc who wanted to head to Madame Tussauds or the palace, I would head straight for the tranquility and solitude, the peace to be found in St Pauls Cathedral or Westminster Abbey. >>>

"The place may be best visited without a dream or a plan."

I always believed that. Still do, really. One evening my wife and I were talking to another couple over dinner and the same subject came up and I voiced that same opinion. I juiced it up a little with some pontification about the benefits of the spontaneous over the sterility of sticking to a pre-conceived itinerary. The woman seemed ok with the notion, but the guy started fidgeting in his chair and finally blurted out, "Yeah, reminds me of my dad...he'd bundle us all in the car and take off for a vacation and when we'd get there, whatever we wanted to do was always sold out.">>>

It seems to me that the journey relies on the quandary.

The destination ends up being the framework for what unfolds.>>>

"The destination ends up being the framework for what unfolds."

That's pretty succinct. You have a special gift for that. So, with that in mind, along with what Woody and Jed have said, I conclude that you have to actually go.>>>

The Acropolis is a fine sight indeed, a group of us stopped there on our way down to the Greek Islands on a motor cycle tour. Crossing the Corinth Canal, constructed by Nero I think, was unimpressive unless you stopped, leaned over the wall on the side of the road and let your mind wander as to the logistics and surveying that it must have entailed. As straight as an arrow as far as the eye can see. In the back of my mind I constantly search for a refuge to hole up in when the chit hits the fan here....... that's a quandry.>>>

Thanks EGG. This thread reminded me of a favorite piece of writing that you probably all have read before, but it seemed good enough to read again:

"When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, I don't improve; in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct other but to inform myself.

When the virus of restlessness begins to take possesion of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find in himself a good and sufficient reason for going. This to the practical bum is not difficult. He has a built-in garden of reasons to choose from. Next he must plan his trip in time and space, choose a direction and a destination. And last he must implement the journey. How to go, what to take, how long to stay. This part of the process is invariable and immortal. I set it down only so that newcomers to bumdom, like teen-agers in new-hatched sin, will not think they invented it.

Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away. In this a journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. I feel better now, having said this, although only those who have experienced it will understand it."

- John Steinbeck, Page 1, Travels with Charley In Search of America

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egg I read your topic as more of a thought and desire and even possibly projection . I have thought that if desire is suppressed it would as in Steinbeck to suppress it. As Steinbeck I don't believe we can conclude that suppressed desire is no longer a desire. Is a subconscious mind directing the universe to it's desire.>>>

Each voyage is travelled three times. The first, when you prepare and read and learn about the place you mean to go. The second, by doing it. The third, by remembering it, discovering new perspectives and vistas that were unknown on the first, and barely registered on the second.

But if we are fortunate to see the world anew, without habit or preconceptions, then a trip to the grocery store is as full of wonder as to a ancient palace hidden in the jungle. That is what travel to a different place does to us - very thing is new, everything is a feast for the senses. And we see with wonder, because we are not filtering out the usual, the common, the routine. Familiarity breeds blindness, if not contempt. So the first step of the journey, is to put aside what we think we know, and see with the eyes of a newly-born babe, perceptions unencumbered by experience or expectation. Then every voyage we make will be one of discovery and wonder, and a delight to the senses and to the mind.>>>

If you're a Traveller Without a Plan, and have never read Peter Jenkin's "Walk Across America" and "The Walk West", I cannot encourage them strongly enough.

You cerebral's never take long to climb over my head, but when I head somewhere, it's never with a plan. Once I get there, I want to do everything. I admit to often loosing much of the wonder contained in the journey out of anxiety for the destination. Perhaps that's why I enjoyed these books so thoroughly. The destination was to soak his toes in the Pacific, but it was just a closing sip of champaign to finish of a truly savory meal.>>>

I am truly impressed w/ the philosophical contributions described above. College professors could not have articulated any better, and I am proud to be in such company. To summarize the above, I believe the following captures the theme - "Life is a journey and death a destination".>>>

Read quotes from Hafiz of. Awesome>>>

Iv'e never read Jenkins but do enjoy Bill Bryson's work, whom I suspect is not dis-similar.>>>

Hi Egg, firstly impressed with your travels. secondly, I agree with El Cid.

My travels have been limited but all adventurous in different ways. More a travel of life and where it has taken me. I have found the travel the best not the destination. I actually feel different, different body & mind. Taking in the place around me, the people, nature, weather, food etc. I appreciate all the wonders of the world and many other marvelous places but I'm satisfied reading of and enjoy the pictures, knowing I'll never see them any better or as cheap. My biggie would be in a rec vehicle wandering around the US off the beaten path. B) PC>>>

PC, my travels don't amount to much really. I'm often a bit jumpy when traveling and it takes a bit of doing to settle into it when I do travel so that I can actually take it in. The faster you travel, the less bonding with a place there is. I like to see the sights, but I'm not much of a sightseer if you know what I mean. In a place like New York or Paris or Kathmandu, there is so much big stuff to see you can go that sightseeing route and it's ok but striking a balance between skimming and getting stuck is always a challenge.

Miscreant, I read that book in 1965 and probably didn't laugh as heartily until I ran into Gary Larsen and Calvin and Hobbes, but I had forgotten all about that deeper side of Steinbeck. I never quite got over The Pearl which I read a year later, so I passed on Cannery Row. A lot of people in the longhair world viewed him as a lightweight when compared to, say, Hemmingway (lol) and I have a sneaking hunch that at 18 I allowed myself to be unduly influenced by some peer pressure (though not always) At least I now know he's waiting there for me to return to.

I agree with Sid, too, but like him I suspect, despite the inherent sadness that goes along with that notion, there is no accompanying morbidity. It just is, and it tends to keep us from wandering around in random aimless circles. There is a time value on options and warrants to purchase stock and life is a warrant. You can't glue it upside down inside a drawer and expect it to draw interest for two hundred years until you redeem it and become rich.>>>