Why I go back –

Why I go back – A Study in Human life.

I started traveling 8 years ago. I didn’t know what exactly I wanted in life, and so instead of committing to an academic program when I didn’t know who I was, I chose to travel. Occasionally I’d question that decision and go back to school. The results tended to be disastrous because I wasn’t integrating school with my life goal. My goal in life is simple: see and do and learn, as much as absolutely humanly possible.

I’d like to trek a good portion of the Yukon. Watch volcanoes erupt in Iceland, Hawaii, Chile, and Guatemala, explore glaciers in Russia, and Alaska. I’d like to hang with the locals, eat strange foods and embarrass myself with my lack of language skills. I’d like to travel by boat through the waters of the Ancient Greeks, exploring their coves and towns they called home.  I’d like to help build a school for children, interacting with them and being taught their language and manners.  I’d like to spend time with the elderly, who know a life so different than my own even though we live in the same country.  Dancing around fires with the natives who have never heard of MTV but who have a love of music which supersedes commercial breaks would feed my love of music.  I’d like to travel by foot, by horse, motorcycle, knowing that the road is long, and that the people and the lands I cross are not familiar to me, while accepting both for the difficulties of my lack of understanding. My life goal is to live a life showing that this world is what we make of it. It doesn’t always have to be what it is currently, nor do you have to do tomorrow what you are doing today.

All of this sounds idealistic, I’m aware. However, a life of travel and learning is not. I’ve taken in Hong Kong with its buildings the populations of small towns and learned about the city planning of an island with 9 million souls to give home to. I’ve traveled by boat through the fjords and glaciers of Alaska, standing in wilds where you’re 45 miles away from the nearest road. I’ve stood on the site of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, acutely aware that the future once portrayed there never came to pass.  I’ve photographed myself in The Bean. I’ve hiked in the mountains and opulence of western North Carolina, partaken in the particular tendencies regulated to the beauties of South Beach, Miami. I’ve been to New Orleans and lived to tell the tale! I’ve stood beside the millions of gallons of water crashing onto the rocks at Niagara Falls! I lived in Washington DC with spooks and wasn’t hauled into the bad office for it.  I’ve partied on Super Yachts with millionaires, and have helped varnish a private boat tied up to the dock in Cannes, France. I’ve sat on the end of a runway in St. Martin, knowing that I was spoiled as the island was suffering through America’s recession.  I’ve meandered through the near washed out towns of Madeira, weathered the chaos of the Mediterranean in a storm from the bridge of a ship. I’ve seen both Europe and Africa at the same time. I’ve played in a coliseum built by the Romans still in use! Then I swam in the river feeding that town’s aqueducts. I’ve lived in a 4000 year old town  on the edge of a sea which was inhabited when the Greeks found it.  The market where I bought veggies and cheese has been there just as long.

I’ve stood before the Birth of Venus, David, Mona Lisa and the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries, all in the original form. In Florence, I watched a midget play the drum, tambourine and the flute at the same time!  I’ve eaten rabbit in a building commanded built by Louis the pick a number in seventeen something or other. I’ve driven the bottle neck on the route Napoleon took to capture Paris, stood where German bombs fell on castles built in 1100.  I’ve sat on the beaches where men died to secure their lively hood. I’ve seen the divots caused by ideological differences in the monuments to the past. All of this I know. This is all part of my life’s work; to see, to travel, to taste the air and know that I am there . To learn by experience is my life.  However, the next step, after these years of travel, is to obtain academic certifications. My official study will be in the fields of Anthropology and Geography.  From my travels and forays into the online world, I’ve noticed that the concepts of the modern versions of Anthropology and Geography are entirely relevant in today’s ever increasing global and technologically based world.
At this point in my career I desire the Academic Credentials necessary to speak and teach about that which I have seen and know. A degree is the next step in my life’s work to see and do and learn as much as absolutely humanly possible. This is all part of my life’s work; to see, to travel, to taste the air and know that I am there . To learn by experience is my life.

Who We Are!

Upstate Fiction Factory is a Writer’s Group in the Upstate of South Carolina.We set goals, support authors of all genres and styles, critique work and occasionally, happily talk off-topic.