Travel: Well, Why Not?

At the age of 24, close to Shackleton’s age, I caught the travel bug. I’ve been infected ever since. At that moment I stood stunned by King Tutankhamen’s golden death mask, oddly alone with it for a moment during the 1978 King Tut exhibit in Seattle, Washington.

Our busload of students had scrambled ahead, leaving me to stare in silent wonder at this glowing ancient treasure. A pauper-poor schoolteacher at the time, I remember thinking, “I’ve just GOT to get to Egypt someday, somehow.”

I still haven’t been to Egypt; odds are I’ll make it, though. It’s on the top of my travel bucket list, and we’ve hesitated only because of well-publicized travel warnings and other logistics. All these years since my moment with the mask, I’ve never stopped dreaming about seeing Egypt’s wonders for myself, just as Shackleton didn’t stop dreaming about reaching the ice-covered poles.

Some people love to travel, some don’t; maybe that’s due to one’s basic personality. I come from a long line of world-wandering sea captains, so it could be in the genes.

And I am drawn to risk takers: My best buddy and I found ourselves in heaps of trouble as children because we loved to ask the question, “Well, why not?”  

Why not, indeed? It’s easy to think of reasons why we can’t go. Maybe that’s why long ago I embraced writer Colette’s advice as my mantra: “If you can do it, why do it?” Travel can seem out of reach sometimes, as it did to me when I was 24, cash-strapped, and hemmed in by life’s responsibilities.

Yet dreamers who dream impossible dreams tend to reach wondrous destinations, and I don’t know about you, but I’ll always want more of that. I would have fit right in with those ancestor sea captains of mine, I’m sure.

Message on the back of this postcard, sent from my great-grandfather to my grandfather in 1915: “This is the ship when she was battling the big seas going through the Pacific. How would you like to have been here? My best regards to Mamma from your Pappa.”