The Lure Of The Unknown

The desire to travel, to explore, to bear witness to majestic sights that I'd read about in newspapers and books starting from a very early age, has been a driving passion of mine since I was old enough to get on a bus alone and just go somewhere, whether it was a few miles across town or a thousand miles or more up the coast.

Which is one the reasons I am baffled by people I know who not only do not like to travel, but have actually never traveled. 

And by never traveled, I mean that these are people who have lived in one and only one neighborhood their entire lives, and have rarely left it, ever.

To have never felt the urge to see the sun setting on a different horizon or to have never longed to look across an ocean in the opposite direction from that which you were born are as inconcieveable to me as never wanting to try a different flavor of ice cream, 

Yet, I know quite a few people who are absolutely content with not ever going across town, much less going across the country. Needless to say, most of those people have never even had a passport.

This past year I was fortunate enough to be able to experience a little of the heartland of the United States during two much-too-brief visits to Iowa & Illinois, and those two much-too-brief visits were like sampling a delicious new flavor of ice cream in that now I am literally craving for a chance to go back to Dubuque and Galena, to drive along the small two-lane highways and byways of the tri-state area, admiring the well-cared for lawns and marveling at the endless miles of rolling hills.

I tried to explain that desire to a friend at a Christmas shindig the other day, but I all I got out of her was rolled eyeballs and a disbelieving "You have got to be kidding me, why would you want to ever leave Colorado, especially to go to such dull and boring places?"

To which I replied, "How can you say those are dull and boring places if you've never even been there?" 

Her response? "Because they're not here, and whatever's not here is probably dull and boring."

Which of course lead me to mentally cross her off my list of people I will be mailing "Wish you were here" postcards to when I take my next vacation.