World Travel

[top photo: my favorite walking stick and I near Pahto (mt. Adams). Bottom photo a winter photo of Tahk Lahk Lake and Pahto.]

I have always wanted to travel the world. As I get older, I see that it will be a dream of mine, but never a reality. That's OK. I have met many world travelers in my lifetime and heard many a wonderful story.

But here, on this blog, with that world map, I see my words get to travel the world. It is kind of odd to me because I don't get to see all your faces, hear a new language and learn a few or a lot of words, see how other peoples live and the diversity within their nations, etc.

I have traveled much of my own little space. I have lived in the Portland, Oregon area for 42 of my 43 years. I have hiked on the Rogue River numerous times as a teenager and loved all of the creeks and trees and loved falling asleep on a large rock formation with another rock as my pillow. One of my favorite places locally is Pahto, aka Mt. Adams. Up there, Rhonda and I picked huckleberries on the non-Indian picking side of the road. My favorite place to camp is Tahk Lahk lake. One time almost two years ago, I hiked up the North face of Pahto and groped a glacier. I saw so many beautiful things, they are too numerous to mention.

Two of my other favorite beautiful things to have seen are hiking around Mt. Jefferson. One was Crystal Mirror Lake. It was so clear that you could see to the bottom at all depths, some places I'd guess more than 10 feet. The water was really cold. And one night we camped by a meadow and I woke up to pee. I went outside my tent and it was freezing cold, and the moon was full hovering in the sky on the opposide side of the meadow, shining an unforgettable luminiscence that I stayed out in the cold for a long time staring before I finally crawled back into my tent and sleeping bag.

The farthest I've been is Florida, which is FLAT. I've been to Canada once, BC, which is also very beautiful.

So, I guess I don't regret not having had the opportunity to travel the world. I get to live vicariously through others for that and through this blog. But I have got to travel rather extensively in my own world, and I Love that!