What if you could spend a whole month away from home—alone? What would it be like to drive 4700 miles round trip carrying all of your food, water, clothing, and gear so that you could stop anywhere, anytime you wanted? How would it feel to hike up 1000 feet on rocky switchbacks in 100 degree weather one day, walk three stories down inside a massive cave the next, breathe thinner air almost 10,500 feet up where you can still see snow the day after that, and know that tomorrow you could stand on a sandy beach next to a clear blue lake that was once the center of explosive volcanic activity?
Imagine smelling the thick, pungent wood smoke from a forest fire you can’t see but you know is burning out of control, or the overpowering odor of sulphuric gas wafting up from boiling thermal pools. Discover museums and historic sites and realize you are walking where dinosaurs, mammoths, and prehistoric Indian people walked. What emotions would you feel at the top of a sacred mountain or as your feet trod in the dirt where brave souls trying to hold on to their families and their homes were hounded until they met untimely, painful deaths? What if you could do these things more than once? What places would call to you with voices so strong that you had to go back? What if you could do more than go on vacation or take a trip, instead choosing to embark on a journey where every day is an adventure and discoveries happen when you least expect them to?
I read many fascinating stories like this; stories of people tired of the rat race who go to the woods in search of their version of Walden, or stories of archeologists in search of ancient cultures—the heart of a people not the just artifacts they left behind. They are stories of seekers craving a connection with the earth, with a spiritual world they know exists but cannot see, with beings—human and animal—who lived long before them, or with some part of themselves they fear they have lost or have never known in the first place. Seekers are not always fearless. More often, they are courageous individuals who find ways to walk through their fears.
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