Urazinduka ntutanga rwuba—You may get up before dawn, but destiny gets up before you.
—Kirundi proverbWhen did you begin?
Was it when your parents had a roll in the hay? When your great grandparents huffed and puffed your grandparents into quickening?
Added on August 20, 2011
My favorite mountaineering book is The Mountains of My Life, by legendary Italian climber Walter Bonatti. While I love being in the mountains—it’s a rare day I don’t daydream about the Alps or the Himalayas—I am not a climber. My favorite mountaineering book is The Mountains of My Life, by legendary Italian climber Walter Bonatti.
Added on August 27, 2010
I read Steinbeck’s East of Eden recently, a marvelous book with more well-wrought themes and characters than a dozen Oscar winners, and it got me to thinking, naturally, of Paradise. It’s what we’re all after, one way or the other, under many a flag—salvation, enlightenment, self-realization (“Be All You Can Be,” as the U.S. Army correctly exhorted), fulfillment, nirvana, heaven. From saint-in-training to suicide bomber, it’s what we do as humans, looking, looking.
Added on March 06, 2008
Travel to new places, especially those far away, is surely one of the most rewarding ways to spend time. But it is also better than just about any other activity for the purpose of grasping the paradox of human existence: your life, and everyone else’s, is only a drop of water in the ocean, but is more valuable than all the stars in the galaxy. To paraphrase a line from the movie Gladiator—“Is all of Rome worth the life of one good man?” I think most of us know the answer to that question, but travel underlines the enduring truth of the answer.
Added on February 19, 2007
The virtues of travel have long been touted, and we are all familiar with the clichés. Travel broadens the mind, dissolves dogma, rattles the cage, brings new vigor to the step. It is hilarious, romantic, life-threatening, enlightening, toxic to weak relationships, invigorating to the strong. Travel is tedious and soporific, exhilarating and addictive. It is expensive because evanescent, cheap because the traveler is forever rewarded with memory and story. You wish you were home, you wish you never had to go home. All of these things are true, and if you are lucky you may well experience each of them on the same trip.
Added on February 21, 2006