rtw with lucy

We learned long ago that it is unnecessary to plan exotic vacations. We learned to let them happen. Planned exotic vacations can become very expensive. We learned that all we need to do is plop ourselves down someplace where we would be “at risk,” and something will probably happen. It may be the unexpected, the unconventional, the odd, the rare, the grotesque, the bizarre, or the exotic. Part of the trick is to be perceptive and detect the grotesque, the bizarre or the exotic and be equal to the opportunity. It is somewhat like learning to see the beauty of the desert. Henry Troyer from “Tales from Paths Less Trodden”.

It’s the dryest, flattest, hottest, most infertile and climactically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life–a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Oz has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. Bill Bryson

Shove off from the shore
and set the ship’s sails
The seven seas shudder with
squalls and strong gales
And six sailors shout, their
shrill and sharp wails
of “sails-ho southwards
The Spanish Main hails!”
tongue twister from Pirates Ho special display at Sydney Maritime Museum

Everything is risky. If you’re looking for absolute safety, you chose the wrong species. You can stay home in bed–but that may make you one of the half-million Americans who require emergency room treatment each year for injuries sustained while falling out of bed. You can cover your windows-but that may make you one of the ten people a year who accidentally hang themselves on the cords of their venetian blinds. You can hide your money in a mattress–but that may make you one of tens of thousands of the people who go to the emergency room each year because of wounds caused by handling money–everything from paper cuts to (for the wealthy), hernias. John Ortberg from “If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat”

This much is true though: I see the world as a series of clues that somehow explain the universe. Pachyderms and narwhals, talipot trees and insect-eating plants, flightless birds and boa constrictors–all are a part of some cryptic message that needs to be deciphered if we are to encounter its wholeness.
James Cowan from “A Mapmaker’s Dream-the meditations of Fra Mauro, cartographer to the court of Venice”

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 8:19 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.