Somewhere in Travel

From Ulysses to Chaucer and onward to Don Quixote, travelers have hit the road on spiritual or idealistic quests. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn launched freedom as they rafted the Mississippi river. On foot, by wagon train, or on horseback fulfilled the individual needs for manifest destiny and desire to, "travel west young man."

Joseph Campbell called the place of travel and transition the "hero's journey." His hero leaves the safety of home and crosses into the unknown where he encounters challenges and ordeals. Jack Kerouac traveled with his fellow beat writer Neal Cassady to find a feeling of America energized by Walk Whitman's writing. Tom Wolfe teamed with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters to bus across America.

Do you have wanderlust? 

Ponder the perspectives of geographical, mental or spiritual travel.

Where have you traveled and what did you discover? How do you prefer to explore life's avenues?

Have you ever wanted to try a vagabond or gypsy lifestyle?

Do you wonder if you had ancestors who traveled in conestoga wagons or by sailing ships?

If time travel intrigues, where would you like to visit?

Where could you become a wayfarer without directions?

If you had a mission to accomplish by traveling across the country, what would it be?

Select items to accompany you for unexpected adventures.  

Respond to the notions above and write about yourself somewhere in travel.

Unanswerable Woes

Making a Fist - Naomi Shihard Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,

I felt the life sliding out of me,

a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.

I was seven, I lay in the car

watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.

My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”

I begged my mother.

We had been traveling for days.

With strange confidence she answered,

“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,

the borders we must cross separately,

stamped with our unanswerable woes.

I who did not die, who am still living,

still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,

clenching and opening one small hand.

Rainer Maria Rilke advises there are no classes for beginners in life. The most difficult thing is always asked of one right away.


How did you employ childhood determination to steer past obstacles?

Which questions did you ask?

Did you make a fist or sprout wings?  

Would you walk backwards or race forward?

How have you grown since childhood in dealing with "unanswerable woes?"

"To dare is
to lose one's footing momentarily.
Not to dare is to lose oneself." - Kierkegaard

Celebrate July 4

Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots,
 it will wither and die. 

                                                           - Dwight D. Eisenhower       

The British, Dutch, French, and Spanish inhabited America. Finally the British took over as the Power. In 1765 The British government under King George, passed the Stamp Act. Great protests arose from American colonists. Additional taxing further angered Americans.

In 1774 the 13 American colonies formed the First Continental Congress. A Committee of Five (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston, and Roger Sherman) prepared the first draft of the “Declaration of Independence” on June 11 to explain why the American colonies wanted separation from the British Empire. To become independent states, they signed it on July 4, 1776.

The committee chose Jefferson over Adams to write the first draft. At only thirty-three, he did not have the reputation of Adams and Franklin but he did possess superior writing skills. With his “felicity of expression” as they called it, Jefferson excelled above the more ponderous Adams. Did they feel concern that, Franklin, good at coining aphorisms, might have included a joke or two?

Take time today to reflect on your legacy as an American. Read the Declaration of Independence.

What do you think about the last lines?  "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."

These men pledged their lives to secure a foundation for the United States of America. Our military supports that pledge. Consider what you can do on July 4 to honor your American heritage. Show your  Positivity.

Share what you feel proud of when you say you're an American.