The urge to travel

“To us travel was a subject of study and an expansion of the mind…....   Now I ask you, patient reader, if you own a horse why haven’t you surrendered to the pull of the horizon? What keeps you from giving in to the same sundown madness that pulled your forefathers and mothers towards the beckoning sea?
Why, as you read this, do you not listen to the stirring of your own blood?
Find your courage! Change the rhythm of your life!”
From: CuChullaine O’Reilly “In search of Equestrian Freedom” (Click HERE  to read full article)

 
It actually makes some sense to me that 5,000 men answered polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s famous want ad: “Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”

For me, travel has always been an adventure to be approached with an open mind and a flexible plan. Not for me the package holidays to lie on the beach (though I’m not averse to lying in the sun!) but rather a journey –  maybe even in some senses a pilgrimage. Whether it be a cycle ride from Swindon to the Mediterranean, a trip to explore the underground caves in the Taurus mountains in turkey with 11 hairy men, perfectly balancing on a limestone cliff over space with just fingers and toes on rock, flying on astronaut training flights with Nasa suspended weightless over the Mexican gulf…... I travel and I am changed.  It may be an exotic trip with a ticket and passport and anti-bacterial wet wipes.  It may be the journeying of my life from one lily pad to another ...  whatever it is, it may well  turn out to be the most important part of being alive. 

The urge to travel is well described by Kent Norburn in “Letters to my son” (from Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life, p. 259)

“That is why we need to travel. If we don’t offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don’t lift to the horizon; our ears don’t hear the sounds around us. The edge is off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.

Don’t let yourself become one of these people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveller has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when you are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge and wisdom you have gained.

 The more I travel, the more I realize that what I own and possess in the material world is of little consequence in the greater scheme of things. Cycling down to the Mediterranean, I had with me everything that I needed to live happily for a month all self contained on one bicycle: my travelling “home”.  Much better than possessions, riches came from the interactions with people along the way: the gift of friendship, the small gifts of coffee or a meal, or even a place to stay. An evening in a French wayside inn sharing wine and stories with the owners.    The curiosity of children about our bicycles and their laden panniers. The glorious views going up to the top of the Massive Centrale, or descending into gorges in the Auverne. Small French street markets to buy goats cheeses for lunch.  In touch with the natural world and moving at a natural pace.

 CuChullaine O’Riley again, this time about travel on horseback:

The rare riders who undertake such a journey become saddle bound pilgrims leading a life based on physical freedom. Their horse takes them on a daily journey deeper away from the never-ending search for consumer products and shows them the way back to the nomadic principles of the past; grass, water, fire, and contemplation.