thoughts, words, deeds

and this is where I'll go

Motivational Monday! Flemish mapmaker Gerardus Mercator was born on this day in 1512. What's been your reasoning behind going anywhere you once thought before you'd never get to?

First off, I read this question, and I think, here’s a person who talks the way I think!

I’ve actually traveled quite a bit inside the US (I’ve lived in eight different states all across the country, plus road trips), and I spent about eighteen months in Northern England (the Lakes, mostly) after I graduated college with my BA. I’ve also visited Canada. I have every confidence that if I really want to visit a country, I’ll figure out a way to make it happen, so there aren’t many places that I’ve thought I’d never get to.

There are still places I want to go—like New Zealand to see all the places behind Lord of the Rings, and to Australia, just because. I’ve wanted to see Greece and France and Italy and Spain and the rest of Europe because the bones of the land must be steeped in stories. I want to see Sweden and Wales and Germany and more of England because I have family from there. I want to see Ireland and the Isle of Man because . . . stories. But I don’t have any preconceptions about what I will see when I get there. I want it to unfold before me like a story, adding upon itself.

Inside the states, I wouldn’t mind visiting Disney World (or Disney Land) because I’ve never been, and the Appalachian Trail because I think it would be fun to spend a summer just walking through the mountains, as long as I had good shoes and could get down before it was really cold. I don’t like the cold.

I want to visit the ocean again, and see the waves wash onto the sand and taste the salt in the air and remember what it was like to be a child. I want to climb lighthouses in Maine, the old ones that still have a mirror that they polish so that it could shine brighter than a sun. I want to crawl through caves where echoes answer every sound and when the lights go off, there’s true darkness. I want to swim in Hawaii and dance the hula.

The thing is, there’s no reason why I couldn’t get there. Someday. If not in person, in a story.