It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,” he used to say. “You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.
J.R.R. Tolkien
Well, I am off in less than a week to parts unknown! Well, I know where I am going (sort of). I will start by visiting my eldest sister and her family in Idalou, Texas for Halloween. From Texas I am off to Rome, Italy where I will take a slow train down to Foggia, Italy. Once there I will spend a week visiting one of my best friends Dave and his family. At some point I will determine how to get myself to Greece where I hope to take even more photographs, write, and enjoy whatever might unfold. I have a ticket to take me from Athens to Dubai where I will spend the last five days soaking in some sun and sand. It is what I call the Quadrangle of Awesomeness.
And after three weeks on walking and taking pictures and visiting friends and family it is planned that I return to Seattle. I suspect I will return if for no other reason than my mother and father are visiting me for Thanksgiving. But a part of me does not want to return, albeit I mean this more metaphorically than physically or literally. My heart? Will it return with me? I suspect I will go to sit with it and do by and by wait with it for a dearest friend to stop and say hello. And I also suspect my heart may decide to stay there in the lingering waves of that sand dune heat to wait some more. But that is another story.
I have come to realize that deep down I am a Traveller. I am not just a traveler of places, but a Traveler of ideas and peoples and cultures and experiences. When I first read “Lord of the Rings” so many decades ago I instinctively understood Bilbo’s warning to his much younger nephew Frodo even if at that time I still had not been much further than to the cornfields at the edge of our manicured lawns of Turk Hill Estates. It is dangerous not because there be monsters at edges of the world, it is dangerous because it forever goes on from one experience to the next. A world of infinite ideas and emotions and perspectives to try to understand and to minimally honor through acknowledgement. I do not know where I am being swept off to, but unlike Bilbo I may be a bit more prepared: I have my hat, favorite walking stick and even a bit of monies in my pocket.
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