The Art of Travelling

Greetings Travelers and Friends.

It is a beautiful Friday morning on July 2, 2010 here in the Sonoma wine country where we live.  Thank you for your overwhelming response so far to Traveling Matters News and your encouragement for my new venture with a Travel Blog.  Yikes…so much to learn.   I trust you will be patient as I fumble and navigate around the blog world and find the best sources to bring to your attention and write my travel experiences – the agony and ectasy of it all……

Today I awoke to asking myself once  again about the meaning of the word travel and why I continue to care so much about my desire to offer travelers more than just a trip.  I was thinking about my own journey with what seduced me toward making a majority of my life's work about connecting myself to others through the art and ritual of travel. Always having a curiosity for cultures starting at a young age reading National Geographic magazines - my world formed larger than the small town I was raised in.  In 1993 after a significant career change, I woke up one morning to an awareness that I wanted to 'travel with purpose' and began a few solo sojourns around the world... So here I am continuing to organize journeys with meaning and mindfulness, with of course large daily sprinklings of FUN and LAUGHTER too!

Anyone can buy a guide book, maps and get to any place I offer travel to but the question of inquiry is to ask yourself: How do you want to travel and who do I want to travel with?  

If you explore the word travel, it has many meanings; some metaphorically and spiritually defined through pilgrimage and often we take a trip just to 'vacate' ones hectic life, schedule and to vacate the mind of the chatter, right?  Here are few interesting words to play with around travel and might assist you when you are thinking about even taking a journey. 

To Travel - A passage.  And if you travel light, you travel without taking much luggage (except for all those different style of shoes that women must pack).  However, metaphorically we may be traveling heavy from an inner perspective and the act of travelling with purpose can open up those unanswered questions, nourish and renew us for our return home.  

I enjoy knowing the origin of place names and words and incorporate this in my journeys to the countries we visit.

The Latin word for traveler is Viator.  Sounds pleasing to say I am a Viator. 

And did you know that the Latin phrase for travel is:  eo ire itum - To go, advance, progress  toward.......

For today consider this  Irish musing:

As you journey through life

choose your destinations well, but do not hurry there.

Wander the back road and forgotten paths

Seek out new voices, strange sights,

and ideas foreign to your own.

Such things are riches for the soul.

And may happiness always be your companion wherever you go, 

Whatever you do.