Here I am, parachuting into the blogosphere (can that be right?), a person on a mission. I'd like to say that I'm taking on a new venture in blogging that I hope will add to a project in educational tourism that I'm doing, but the truth is, I've been writing just about everything -- letters, postcards (with the smallest handwriting possible in order to cram the most greeting and info into it), notes, journals, and yes, logs of trips ... well, since I was a kid. Now I do it for a living. It's like breathing -- if I stop, I'll pass out.
Where is the blogosphere, anyway? If you launch a blog, you must be aiming up, right? You aspire to write a blog, you aim your arrow of communication into the sky and hope it lands somewhere in someone's sphere of notice. Maybe they read the message tied to the arrow; maybe they don't. It's the same as writing essays or articles. You may not hear anything at all at first, any response to what you've put out there. Years later, you may meet someone who tells you the arrow hit him or her in the heart (one hopes in a good way), and it left a mark they never forgot.
What's this got to do with travel, you say.
By launching this blog, this small watercraft onto the ocean of humanity, I'm journeying into the world -- at times physically (I've been to Europe, Japan, Jamaica, and my favorite island on earth, Santorini, Greece. I've been to most of the states on the eastern seaboard of the US, Texas, California, and it looks like I'll be getting to know the New York State Canal system, made up of four canals that take you from the beginning of the Hudson River all the way to Buffalo. Even I didn't realize there were four, and I live in New York State) .. and other times, mentally and spiritually.
And because I'm a writer, all journeys are worth recording, sharing, discussing. How about you? Who's out there? Where have you been? Where in the world would you like to go?
Like you, I've been up and down and all around (my favorite island on earth is Malta). I can imagine beginning simply ... how about 15 miles on the Erie Canal?
Posted by: Mick Mather | May 01, 2008 at 08:14 AM
And I haven't even written yet about my time sitting outside the Red Mill Inn in Baldwinsville, (outside Syracuse)looking over the raging Seneca River, the dam and the lock on the canal -- and oh yeah -- the bridge -- watching the blue heron hunting and eating a fish in four long gulps (ouch). I realize now that what I supposed were salmon jumping in the rapids were most likely trout... right? Salmon are in Lake Ontario. Trout are populous in the rivers and lakes of the Finger Lakes in central and western New york State.
Whatever they were, they were leaping! And it was such a relaxing moment. How many people know just how beautiful New York State really is?
Posted by: Marci Diehl | May 01, 2008 at 01:18 PM