--Carl Sagan
"So where are you going on vacation this summer?"
a well meaning friend asked me not long ago.
"Columbus, Ohio!" I replied with enthusiasm.
"It's my yearly summer road trip. This August it's 765 miles from here to
there. I can't wait to go and just explore."
"But...Columbus,
Ohio?! Why?" she persisted.
"Because I've never been there." I replied.
That's really the only reason I need to travel: because I've
yet to visit some part of God's Creation.
Explore it. Learn more about its history. Discover what makes a place
like Columbus a very special place, one of kind, home to so many.
So some of my destinations on this trip have included, yes, Columbus: capitol of Ohio, home to minor league baseball and the
Clippers, who play in a gorgeous downtown stadium. Cheap tickets, tasty hot
dogs and "Play ball!". And Akron,
Ohio, where Alcoholics Anonymous
was born in a quaint guest house on the grounds of a local tire magnate's estate.
Two struggling drunks shared a cup of coffee there in 1935 and together they discovered
the miracle of recovery for millions of people. And Seneca Falls, New York,
where in 1848 the first Women's Rights Convention was held. Participants,
including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Fredrick Douglass, demanded that America live up
to the ideal that all people are created equal, that the vote
must be given to women. And the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood of Cleveland, where a good
friend of mine opens up the church he serves for community basketball, as a
beacon of hospitality and non-violence in a hardscrabble urban landscape.
If I hadn't detoured off the main roads, explored these off
the beaten path places, away from typical tourist haunts, I'd never have
discovered their unique stories. Their quirks and oddities. Their place as just
one part of this amazing country and world. I wonder why more of us as tourists
and vacationers, travelers and wanderers, don't go out of our ways to explore such
destinations.
Sure, we all want to go to the places that the millions also
explore: Times Square in the Big Apple, Boston's
Faneuil Hall, the strip in Las Vegas, Mount Rushmore. I've visited those places, but will I
return? Not likely. One and done. Such marquee landmarks are often too crowded,
too familiar, too easy to experience. Don't get me wrong. I loved Wall Drug in South Dakota and the Empire State
Building and Disney World
too.
But when I travel I also ask the human spirit of wandering
to bring me to a hole in the wall diner in Lime Springs, Iowa.
Or on a long bike ride along the Lake Woebegone path in northern Minnesota. Or to the architect Frank Lloyd
Wright's studio in the leafy Chicago suburb of Oak Park. And, of course,
to a baseball game, anytime, anywhere! All in a quest to explore and be an
explorer in life, of life. Throw out the map and toss the GPS and go off road.
For when we choose to go beyond our well worn boundaries and
outside of our travel comfort zones, the world changes and we change for the
better too. We live in a time when too many of us spend too much energy exploring
the world, virtually, all through our screens. Yet there is no substitute for
face to face exploration. You have to actually be there to "be there".
We also live in a time when our nation is infected with an angry spirit, fueled
in part by geographic and political ignorance. Thus so called
"deplorables" despise so called "over educated coastal
elites" and visa versa.
Imagine what might happen if we as Americans chose to
explore parts of the United
States that we've never seen, that we far
too easily stereotype. I know this sometimes snobby northeastener has had my
mind and heart opened up by leaving the familiar and getting to know folks in
far away places.
All you need for such adventures is a full tank of gas, a
spirit of exploration and the courage to take a road less traveled. Be an explorer. I dare you! Go! Even all the way to Columbus, Ohio.
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