Why start another blog called There and Back Again? Travel changes us in subtle ways, according to my mother Joy who has traveled the globe with my father at her side. But for us, it was more than an internal shift and subtle dawning.
We decided on a trip where we arranged all the details. We assembled our trip one piece at a time, the Eurail, the hotels, the Metros and Undergrounds and Buses and sights and how long to stay. The process of planning the trip turned out to be a big part of the experience, and I wouldn't have believed that was true.
Travel and marriage share a commonality, that the journey is in letting go both inwardly and outwardly, and by doing that one cannot help but be changed. The research and exploration and immersion into other cultures during these weeks broadened our knowledge, deepened our appreciation, and humbled our hearts.
Says Cesare Paves: "Traveling forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things – air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it."
The gift of travel is in being able to see the delicate filament of life that brims and overflows and ties us together. We breathe life into wherever we are, taking the steps two at a time and memorizing routines in the world we know. But there is so much more, around every corner, across every sea, at the top of the mountains and in the rain forests, people just like us living and thinking and eating and loving as far as their imaginations go.
And so the magic of travel is also to be shown how close we are, how much the same, with shared dreams and wonderment. And that deserves its own home, these stories to be written down and remembered long after the details fade.
Whatever life is, it is vast and majestic and richly lived. That is the lesson of travel. That is the discovery we found.
http://bushtreks.blogspot.com/ (which is also linked along the side just under our photo)
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