What is an Explorer? Do I Qualify?

Two things happened this week that led to this entry.

1.      My good friend Kevin asked two very pointed questions: what makes me leave all that is known and familiar and strike out for unknown parts? Do I come from a long line of wanderers?

2.      Celebrating Ewelina’s birthday, we got on the topic of where we would go if we could go anywhere.

The plan was that Ewelina was going to win the lottery and treat us each to our dream trip. Luiza said she wanted to give the idea some thought and I popped out with Tristan da Cuhna, a place that any explorer worth their salt ought to have on their list of to-go places.

Ewelina said her dream destination was anywhere she could go with a pack on her back, exploring every crevice to be found along the way.

I contended that, were I in her same age group, that would be my dream trip, too. Now a little more age-advanced and actually needing a few creature comforts, I have become a vagabond with pretentions.

My friends whipped out their phones to research Tristan, we all laughed at my being too old to want to sleep on the ground, and the conversation moved on.

It was a most pleasant evening. The shivers didn’t start till the next day, when I read Kevin’s message.

~~~~~~

I want to take a moment here to thank those people who have stayed with me throughout this vagabonding adventure. 

These are dear people with whom I have had the pleasure of crossing paths with by sheer happenstance. Literally, an accident of geography brought us together; we lived in the same area and worked at the same plant.

Now, nearly a decade removed from that place of employment and having not been on the same continent for years, we still send text messages, emails and even maintain a fairly regular video calling schedule.

These people I am privileged to know, who don’t see my acts of wandering as acts of abandonment, are my bedrock. For them as for me, friendship transcends miles and time zones.

I find their devotion to our friendship remarkable. I only hope I give those ties, and those people, their due.

~~~~~~

Kevin  is currently traveling. Taking a welcome break from our (my former, his current) place of work, he is now back in his family fold, where he will wallow for the next two weeks.

Perhaps it is the permanence of ‘the ole homestead’ and the four generations of kinfolk living there that made him ask, after all of these years, why I wander.

I suppose that, for him, the timelessness of ‘home’ might have caused him to wonder how anyone can stand to blow around the world like a tumbleweed, without ever putting down roots.

His innocent and obviously well-meaning query has been knocking around my head all day.

The short and ultimately unsatisfying answer to it is: I like to travel and learn new things.

It is unsatisfying because it is a slippery slope: there’s plenty to learn in the country of my citizenship and plenty of places to go... why don’t I just stay there and do my traveling?

And it implies that my likes take precedence over the people in my life. I REALLY don’t like that thought!

~~~~~~

What is an Explorer?

By definition, such a person is also called a discoverer, a traveler, a rambler, a globetrotter...

As such, both Ewelina and I qualify as explorers. Are we in the same league as Gertrude Bell or Nellie Bly?

In my case, definitely not. I can’t speak for my friend; her spirit and thirst for adventure just might put her on par with those ladies one day.

On the other hand, the set of circumstances that women operated under a century ago make it doubtful that any adventuring female today could match the daring of past explorers who were women, even if they embody that sense of élan.

Naturally, that question is moot for explorers of the male persuasion; it is true that they face all of the challenges inherent in exploring but they are not likely to face obstacles thrown up by their gender.

But then, nor would they gain extraordinary recognition for any feats they might accomplish, whereas a female explorer might. But I digress...

Where, as Kevin asks, does my travel bug come from?

I believe I can discount my father’s side of the family; hardly any of those relatives ever left their home state and even fewer have left the country.

There is potential for inherited wanderlust from my mother’s side, though. The men were mostly all engineers and, according to my uncle, my family’s male ancestors helped run oil pipelines through west Africa. 

Bearing that assertion out is a collection of photographs, over a century old, including several of them in which my grandparents were dressed in ‘colonial garb’ while assigned to work in Senegal. My grandmother stayed at home (another picture reveals a house with servants) while her husband tromped all over the countryside in search of optimal pipeline territory.

If that epoch in my family’s lineage is the cause of my need for travel, that supposes that the desire to travel is hereditary. That the lust for distant shores and adventure is genetically programmed.

That sounds rather absurd. This next postulate does too.

According to family legend, I was born in the back seat of the taxi that was taking my mother to the hospital for my imminent arrival.

So the story goes, by the time the cabbie stopped in front of the hospital doors and  the medical staff trotted out to meet the laboring mother, I was already in this world, lying serenely on the seat with my eyes wide open and my thumb in my mouth.

Thus, because of my vehicular birth, I am doomed to a life of travel, never staying in one place for too long.

It could have happened the way they say it did. I might have been a beautiful baby, all wide-eyed and placid on the back seat of a cab.

However, having given birth to a couple of children myself, I find it hard to believe that there wouldn’t have been absolute mayhem in that cab and that the driver wouldn’t have cussed a blue streak at the mess he would have to clean.

A thumb-sucking, wide-eyed baby, serene in the middle of all of that? And being doomed to lifelong travel simply because of accidental taxi birth?

It makes for a good party story but I’m not buying it.

I think what really doomed me to wander my whole life was moving, my whole life.

Before I was fully conscious of the world around me, we left the land of my birth for my father’s home country. Once there, we moved four times – to four different states in five years, after which we boarded an airplane and headed back overseas. 

Four years after that, it was time to move to another country again. And then, two years later... and the year after that, and then – oh, joy! - we stayed in one place for a full seven years! Not at the same address but in the same city... for a whole seven years! 

There was traveling during that time, just no relocating.

Those seven years were the longest stretch I stayed in any one place during the first 20 years of my life. In fact, I still identify with that city and country: that is where I graduated from high school, found my first job and where I transitioned from adolescent to adult.

Having been a traveler from birth, I have no true idea what it feels like to have a sense of continuity brought on by ties to a locale (or to extended family, but that’s another matter altogether).

I cannot imagine what it’s like to stay in one place more than a few years, to put down roots and to see what grows from them.

Well, I can’t say I have no idea; I see plenty of people with that sense of permanence. Kevin is a case in point: returning year after year to the city he grew up in, to the house he grew up in, to the people he grew up with...

Would I trade places with him, if I could?

Probably not. His family wouldn’t know me, I wouldn’t know any of his landmarks or even where his family lives.      

It’s probably best I stay an explorer.