Journeys
Mark Twain told us that: "Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."
He's right.
We journey to see the world through the eyes of others. A bigger, broader, more vibrant world awaits...
Beginning
The Pyramid of the Magician in the Yucatan. It is my favorite of the great pyramids of the Maya, in large part due to its distinctive architectural style. With an oval base, rounded shoulders and steep rise (closer to 60 degrees than the more common 45 degrees), it is singular among the other great pyramids scattered across the peninsula.
the yucatan
The vast constellation of city-states that made up the empire have, for the most part, been gone for millennia, swallowed by the great forest. Modern remote sensing technology is peeling back the cover, bringing them back, revealing an ever-expanding presence and deepening history in central America.
And the Mayans?
They are still here, they never left.
“If Mark Twain was right when he said that travel is the death of prejudice, then pilgrimage is the birth of open-mindedness and the rebirth of what the ancient Greeks called xenophilia, the love of strangers, an appreciation of foreign cultures, a passion for understanding what is other.”
Phil Cousineau
the Dordogne
The other-ness of the Dordogne basin runs well back in time. Our walk through the basin takes 10 days and covers over 100 miles. We start in Les Eyzies; why not? Early Homo sapiens were here some 40,000 years ago, the Neaderthal an order of magnitude longer. The limestone plateau, deeply dissected and honeycombed with caves, was a welcoming place toward the end of the Pleistocene. Communities flourished, and, judging by the cave paintings found here, so did the desire to be creative. Maybe not so otherly after all?
“An inch of surprise leads to a mile of gratefulness.”
David Steindl-Rast
Even preparing for it, hoping for it, the stunning geography of New Zealand is still surprising. The landscape is an ever-changing kaleidoscope, not only are the two islands different places, each island is a journey into the unexpected. The greatest surprise? It’s the encompassing sense of gentleness, the easy way that life mantles the landscape, the filial relationship with the environment, the recognition that the world is local and precious. I’m grateful simply knowing that it exists.