I like to travel with people, and not alone, and it’s not because of safety. Traveling alone hasn’t proven all that unsafe for me, and when I traveled with my friend, we both ended up with dengue fever, so either way, traveling can be safe or unsafe. I Like to travel with other people so we can share the beauty of the world.
In the deep forests of Georgia (the country) the stark beauty of the mountains hit me and my partner instantly. We stared at the infinite rolling forests as they covered the mountain ranges. Seven layers of mountains going from dark green to the palest most ephemeral blue hung in the distant horizon. If I were alone who would I have shared that with? No camera could catch this beauty, could see as far as my eyes and sense the fresh pine breeze as it swayed and creaked the forest. There my partner and I stood for thirty minutes memorizing the memorizing beauty of everything. That day and many days sense we have talked about those mountains, and through our words our memories rush back to us, and there we are standing again in front of beauty.
In the USA I traveled alone, and alone and cold I found myself in the Mojave Desert as the sun set. My body was soaked from sweat from the heat of the day, and my drinking water was already frozen solid from the cold of the coming night. I waited on the side of the darkening road, alone, as the sun fell over the horizon, and there, I again glimpsed true beauty. The yellow sun stretched into a narrow band covered the horizon and there it changed, as wiggling red and orange fingers slowly probed the ever shrinking yellow band. The sky reflected on the sand, or maybe the sand reflected on the sky, or it all might have been a hallucination, but there I watched as the once mundane sky transformed into modern art of moving life, of colors that caught the eyes and kept the soul. I watched until the only color left was the pure black of moonless night. I had been happy, but then sad, the beauty was intense, but I had no one to share the experience with, no one setting beside me who I could talk to and remember the intense beauty.
I will keep traveling until my bones crumble into dust, but as I travel, I will always take a travel partner with me, someone to forever share these experiences with.
