The Need for Travel

There is a poster on the wall of the hostel we're at, and I can't help but feel quite a connection to the message. It's about the need for travel... We need to travel. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon; our ears don't hear the sounds around us. The edge is taken off our experience, and we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days. Don't let yourself become one of those people. The fear of the unknown and the lure of the comfortable will conspire to keep you from taking the chances the traveller has to take. But if you take them, you will never regret your choice. To be sure, there will be moments of doubt when you stand alone on an empty road in an icy rain, or when your are ill with fever in a rented bed. But as the pains of the moment will come, so too will they fall away. In the end, you will be so much richer, so much stronger, so much clearer, so much happier, and so much better a person that all the risk and hardship will seem like nothing compared to the knowledge you have gained. ~Letters to My Son: A Fathers Wisdom on Manhood, Women, Life and Love By Kent Nerburn This passage really resonates with me. The doubt is starting to set in here and there, and I'm thinking of home more often than not. And dreaming of home too! The last six weeks of switching beds, finding food, and moving on have taken its toll on my mental and physiological health. I'm fine, overall, and still having a good time, but I am tired, in need of some respite, and look forward to staying somewhat stationary for more than five days. We're still planning on heading to the south island on Tuesday morning, so once we get there, I'm hoping we'll love Nelson enough to stay for a while, but we're not sure how our final plans will pan out. The unstable quality of plans is yet another wonderous, yet challenging thing about travelling....